ArticleThe ISME journal2018
Multiple stable states in microbial communities explained by the stable marriage problem.
Article in The ISME journal, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 47 papers.
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Who cites it
47 citing papers in PubMed.
- Biological Systems as Physical Data Processors: Evolution as a Case of Embodied Computing.BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology · 2026Review
- Keystone concept revisited: insights into microbial community dynamics and control.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2026Review
- Emergent frequency-dependent selection predicts mutation outcomes in complex ecological communities.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- A theory of ecological invasions and its implications for eco-evolutionary dynamics.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Inference of causal interaction networks of gut microbiota using transfer entropy.BMC genomics · 2025Article
- Emergence of alternative states in a synthetic human gut microbial community.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Growth stage and interspecies interactions shape the cell biology and cell cycle characteristics of human gut bacteria Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron and Roseburia intestinalis.Communications biology · 2025Article
- A theory of ecological invasions and its implications for eco-evolutionary dynamics.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Article
- Replicating community dynamics reveals how initial composition shapes the functional outcomes of bacterial communities.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Impact of grassland saline-alkaline degradation on domestic herbivore rumen microbiota and methane emissions.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2025Article
- Review
- Statistically learning the functional landscape of microbial communities.Nature ecology & evolution · 2023Article
- The Architecture of Metabolic Networks Constrains the Evolution of Microbial Resource Hierarchies.Molecular biology and evolution · 2023Article
- Top-down identification of keystone taxa in the microbiome.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Bacterial communities of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes differ between crop and midgut tissues.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2023Article
- Controlling the human microbiome.Cell systems · 2023Review
- Origins of life: first came evolutionary dynamics.QRB discovery · 2023Review
- The reciprocal changes in dominant species with complete metabolic functions explain the decoupling phenomenon of microbial taxonomic and functional composition in a grassland.Frontiers in microbiology · 2023Article
- Site-tropism of streptococci in the oral microbiome.Molecular oral microbiology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Experimental studies of microbial communities routinely reveal that they have multiple stable states. While each of these states is generally resilient, certain perturbations such as antibiotics, probiotics, and diet shifts, result in transitions to other states. Can we reliably both predict such stable states as well as direct and control transitions between them? Here we present a new conceptual model-inspired by the stable marriage problem in game theory and economics-in which microbial communities naturally exhibit multiple stable states, each state with a different species' abundance profile. Our model's core ingredient is that microbes utilize nutrients one at a time while competing with each other. Using only two ranked tables, one with microbes' nutrient preferences and one with their competitive abilities, we can determine all possible stable states as well as predict inter-state transitions, triggered by the removal or addition of a specific nutrient or microbe. Further, using an example of seven Bacteroides species common to the human gut utilizing nine polysaccharides, we predict that mutual complementarity in nutrient preferences enables these species to coexist at high abundances.
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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.