The effects of metabolite production cost on cooperation in microbial communities

Document Type

Presentation Abstract

Presentation Date

4-10-2017

Abstract

Metabolic cross-feeding between microbes is observed in many microbial communities. It has been experimentally observed that cross-feeding synthetic communities have increased level of fitness and cell growth as compared to wild type cells. There are also numerous examples of cross-feeding communities in nature.

Our goal is to develop a model to analyze the effects that resource investment into metabolite production have on the evolution of syntrophy in a microbial community. We first analyze the investment into the substrates and enzymes that are used to produce the metabolite in a metabolic pathway in order to formulate a representation of the cost of producing the metabolite. We then combine this cost function together with a model of a microbial community containing a variety of phenotypes to observe conditions under which cooperation occurs.

Additional Details

Monday, April 10, 2017 at 3:00 p.m. in Math 103
Refreshments at 4:00 p.m. in Math Lounge 109

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