ArticleBMC evolutionary biology2017
A passive mutualistic interaction promotes the evolution of spatial structure within microbial populations.
Article in BMC evolutionary biology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 29 papers.
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Who cites it
29 citing papers in PubMed.
- Strengthen or Weaken: Evolutionary Directions of Cross-Feeding After Formation.Environmental microbiology reports · 2025Review
- Uptake and leakage rates differentially shape community arrangement and composition of microbial consortia.The ISME journal · 2025Article
- Deciphering microbial spatial organization: insights from synthetic and engineered communities.ISME communications · 2025Review
- Time of first contact determines cooperator success in a three-member microbial consortium.ISME communications · 2025Article
- The evolution of reduced facilitation in a four-species bacterial community.Evolution letters · 2024Article
- A framework for understanding collective microbiome metabolism.Nature microbiology · 2024Review
- Enhanced metabolic entanglement emerges during the evolution of an interkingdom microbial community.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Metabolic interactions affect the biomass of synthetic bacterial biofilm communities.mSystems · 2023Article
- Evolutionary repeatability of emergent properties of ecological communities.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Impact of direct physical association and motility on fitness of a synthetic interkingdom microbial community.The ISME journal · 2023Article
- Responses of Salmonella biofilms to oxidizing biocides: Evidence of spatial clustering.Environmental microbiology · 2022Article
- Controlling microbial co-culture based on substrate pulsing can lead to stability through differential fitness advantages.PLoS computational biology · 2022Article
- Initial community composition determines the long-term dynamics of a microbial cross-feeding interaction by modulating niche availability.ISME communications · 2022Article
- Adaptive laboratory evolution of microbial co-cultures for improved metabolite secretion.Molecular systems biology · 2021Article
- Microbial competition reduces metabolic interaction distances to the low µm-range.The ISME journal · 2021Article
- Extracellular Metabolism Sets the Table for Microbial Cross-Feeding.Microbiology and molecular biology reviews : MMBR · 2021Review
- Positive interactions within and between populations decrease the likelihood of evolutionary rescue.PLoS computational biology · 2021Article
- Rapid evolution destabilizes species interactions in a fluctuating environment.The ISME journal · 2021Article
- Recurrent Urinary Tract Infections: Unraveling the Complicated Environment of Uncomplicated rUTIs.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2021Review
- Iron is not everything: unexpected complex metabolic responses between iron-cycling microorganisms.The ISME journal · 2020Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundWhile mutualistic interactions between different genotypes are pervasive in nature, their evolutionary origin is not clear. The dilemma is that, for mutualistic interactions to emerge and persist, an investment into the partner genotype must pay off: individuals of a first genotype that invest resources to promote the growth of a second genotype must receive a benefit that is not equally accessible to individuals that do not invest. One way for exclusive benefits to emerge is through spatial structure (i.e., physical barriers to the movement of individuals and resources).
resultsHere we propose that organisms can evolve their own spatial structure based on physical attachment between individuals, and we hypothesize that attachment evolves when spatial proximity to members of another species is advantageous. We tested this hypothesis using experimental evolution with combinations of E. coli strains that depend on each other to grow. We found that attachment between cells repeatedly evolved within 8 weeks of evolution and observed that many different types of mutations potentially contributed to increased attachment.
conclusionsWe postulate a general principle by which passive beneficial interactions between organisms select for attachment, and attachment then provides spatial structure that could be conducive for the evolution of active mutualistic interactions.
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