Spatio-temporal modeling of the crowding conditions and metabolic variability in microbial communities

by Liliana Angeles-Martinez, Vassily Hatzimanikatis The metabolic capabilities of the species and the local environment shape the microbial interactions in a community either through the exchange of metabolic products or the competition for the resources. Cells are often arranged in close proximity to each other, creating a crowded environment that unevenly reduce the diffusion of nutrients. Herein, we investigated how the crowding conditions and metabolic variability among cells shape the dynamics of microbial communities. For this, we developed CROMICS, a spatio-temporal framework that combines techniques such as individual-based modeling, scaled particle theory, and thermodynamic flux analysis to explicitly incorporate the cell metabolism and the impact of the presence of macromolecular components on the nutrients diffusion. This framework was used to study two archetypical microbial communities (i)Escherichia coli andSalmonella enterica that cooperate with each other by exchanging metabolites, and (ii) twoE.coli with different production level of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) that compete for the same nutrients. In the mutualistic community, our results demonstrate that crowding enhanced the fitness of cooperative mutants by reducing the leakage of metabolites from the region where they are produced, avoiding the resource competition with non-cooperative cells. Moreover, we also show thatE.coli EPS-secreting mutants won the competition against the non-secretin...
Source: PLoS Computational Biology - Category: Biology Authors: Source Type: research