ArticleNature2011
Metabolic trade-offs and the maintenance of the fittest and the flattest.
Article in Nature, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 50 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
50 citing papers in PubMed, 132 citations in OpenAlex.
- Phage therapy: from basic biology to clinical application.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2026Review
- Neuronal protein Sex-lethal modulates tRNA synthesis via the polymerase III subunit Polr3E in male Drosophila neurons.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Effects of resource packaging on the adaptative and pleiotropic consequences of evolution.NPJ systems biology and applications · 2025Article
- Resource presentation dictates genetic and phenotypic adaptation in yeast.BMC ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Experimental evolution of yeast shows that public-goods upregulation can evolve despite challenges from exploitative non-producers.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Article
- Metabolic efficiency reshapes the seminal relationship between pathogen growth rate and virulence.Ecology letters · 2023Article
- Resource allocation accounts for the large variability of rate-yield phenotypes across bacterial strains.eLife · 2023Article
- Spatiotemporal ecological chaos enables gradual evolutionary diversification without niches or tradeoffs.eLife · 2023Article
- Bridging ribosomal synthesis to cell growth through the lens of kinetics.Biophysical journal · 2023Article
- Microbial population dynamics decouple growth response from environmental nutrient concentration.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Does plasmid-based beta-lactam resistance increase E. coli infections: Modelling addition and replacement mechanisms.PLoS computational biology · 2022Article
- Hierarchical and simultaneous utilization of carbon substrates: mechanistic insights, physiological roles, and ecological consequences.Current opinion in microbiology · 2021Review
- An interplay of resource availability, population size and mutation rate potentiates the evolution of metabolic signaling.BMC ecology and evolution · 2021Article
- Predicting microbial growth dynamics in response to nutrient availability.PLoS computational biology · 2021Article
- Ratio of Electron Donor to Acceptor Influences Metabolic Specialization and Denitrification Dynamics inFrontiers in microbiology · 2021Article
- Modeling microbial metabolic trade-offs in a chemostat.PLoS computational biology · 2020Article
- Populations of genetic circuits are unable to find the fittest solution in a multilevel genotype-phenotype map.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2020Article
- Multistability and regime shifts in microbial communities explained by competition for essential nutrients.eLife · 2019Article
- Cell population heterogeneity driven by stochastic partition and growth optimality.Scientific reports · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
How is diversity maintained? Environmental heterogeneity is considered to be important, yet diversity in seemingly homogeneous environments is nonetheless observed. This, it is assumed, must either be owing to weak selection, mutational input or a fitness advantage to genotypes when rare. Here we demonstrate the possibility of a new general mechanism of stable diversity maintenance, one that stems from metabolic and physiological trade-offs. The model requires that such trade-offs translate into a fitness landscape in which the most fit has unfit near-mutational neighbours, and a lower fitness peak also exists that is more mutationally robust. The 'survival of the fittest' applies at low mutation rates, giving way to 'survival of the flattest' at high mutation rates. However, as a consequence of quasispecies-level negative frequency-dependent selection and differences in mutational robustness we observe a transition zone in which both fittest and flattest coexist. Although diversity maintenance is possible for simple organisms in simple environments, the more trade-offs there are, the wider the maintenance zone becomes. The principle may be applied to lineages within a species or species within a community, potentially explaining why competitive exclusion need not be observed in homogeneous environments. This principle predicts the enigmatic richness of metabolic strategies in clonal bacteria and questions the safety of lethal mutagenesis as an antimicrobial treatment.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.