ArticlePloS one2015
An Economic Framework of Microbial Trade.
Article in PloS one, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed.
- Strengthen or Weaken: Evolutionary Directions of Cross-Feeding After Formation.Environmental microbiology reports · 2025Review
- Mechanisms of cooperation in the plants-arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi-bacteria continuum.The ISME journal · 2025Review
- A framework for understanding collective microbiome metabolism.Nature microbiology · 2024Review
- A molecular toolkit of cross-feeding strains for engineering synthetic yeast communities.Nature microbiology · 2024Article
- Ruminations on sustainable and safe food: Championing for open symbiotic cultures ensuring resource efficiency, eco-sustainability and affordability.Microbial biotechnology · 2024Article
- Economic microbiology: exploring microbes as agents in economic systems.Frontiers in microbiology · 2024Review
- Review
- Weaponising microbes for peace.Microbial biotechnology · 2023Article
- Effects of exogenous organic matter addition on agricultural soil microbial communities and relevant enzyme activities in southern China.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Engineering microbial technologies for environmental sustainability: choices to make.Microbial biotechnology · 2022Article
- Mycorrhizal fungi control phosphorus value in trade symbiosis with host roots when exposed to abrupt 'crashes' and 'booms' of resource availability.The New phytologist · 2021Article
- A piece of the pie: engineering microbiomes by exploiting division of labor in complex polysaccharide consumption.Current opinion in chemical engineering · 2020Article
- Using golden apple snail to mitigate its invasion and improve soil quality: a biocontrol approach.Environmental science and pollution research international · 2020Article
- Disentangling strictly self-serving mutations from win-win mutations in a mutualistic microbial community.eLife · 2019Article
- Individual- versus group-optimality in the production of secreted bacterial compounds.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2019Article
- Synthetic Biology Tools to Engineer Microbial Communities for Biotechnology.Trends in biotechnology · 2019Review
- Less Is More: Genome Reduction and the Emergence of Cooperation-Implications into the Coevolution of Microbial Communities.International journal of genomics · 2019Review
- A systematic approach to cancer: evolution beyond selection.Clinical and translational medicine · 2017Article
- Genome-driven evolutionary game theory helps understand the rise of metabolic interdependencies in microbial communities.Nature communications · 2017Article
- Maintenance of Microbial Cooperation Mediated by Public Goods in Single- and Multiple-Trait ScenariosJournal of bacteriology · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
A large fraction of microbial life on earth exists in complex communities where metabolic exchange is vital. Microbes trade essential resources to promote their own growth in an analogous way to countries that exchange goods in modern economic markets. Inspired by these similarities, we developed a framework based on general equilibrium theory (GET) from economics to predict the population dynamics of trading microbial communities. Our biotic GET (BGET) model provides an a priori theory of the growth benefits of microbial trade, yielding several novel insights relevant to understanding microbial ecology and engineering synthetic communities. We find that the economic concept of comparative advantage is a necessary condition for mutualistic trade. Our model suggests that microbial communities can grow faster when species are unable to produce essential resources that are obtained through trade, thereby promoting metabolic specialization and increased intercellular exchange. Furthermore, we find that species engaged in trade exhibit a fundamental tradeoff between growth rate and relative population abundance, and that different environments that put greater pressure on group selection versus individual selection will promote varying strategies along this growth-abundance spectrum. We experimentally tested this tradeoff using a synthetic consortium of Escherichia coli cells and found the results match the predictions of the model. This framework provides a foundation to study natural and engineered microbial communities through a new lens based on economic theories developed over the past century.
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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.