ArticleeLife2019
Disentangling strictly self-serving mutations from win-win mutations in a mutualistic microbial community.
Article in eLife, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 13 citations in OpenAlex.
- Asymmetric metabolic adaptations undermine stability in microbial syntrophy.ISME communications · 2025Article
- Emergence and maintenance of stable coexistence during a long-term multicellular evolution experiment.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Article
- Review
- Extracellular Metabolism Sets the Table for Microbial Cross-Feeding.Microbiology and molecular biology reviews : MMBR · 2021Review
- Article
- Response of Sugarcane Rhizosphere Bacterial Community to Drought Stress.Frontiers in microbiology · 2021Article
- Enhanced nutrient uptake is sufficient to drive emergent cross-feeding between bacteria in a synthetic community.The ISME journal · 2020Article
- Metabolic excretion associated with nutrient-growth dysregulation promotes the rapid evolution of an overt metabolic defect.PLoS biology · 2020Article
- The microbial exometabolome: ecological resource and architect of microbial communities.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Review
- Simulations reveal challenges to artificial community selection and possible strategies for success.PLoS biology · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Mutualisms can be promoted by pleiotropic win-win mutations which directly benefit self (self-serving) and partner (partner-serving). Intuitively, partner-serving phenotype could be quantified as an individual's benefit supply rate to partners. Here, we demonstrate the inadequacy of this thinking, and propose an alternative. Specifically, we evolved well-mixed mutualistic communities where two engineered yeast strains exchanged essential metabolites lysine and hypoxanthine. Among cells that consumed lysine and released hypoxanthine, a chromosome duplication mutation seemed win-win: it improved cell's affinity for lysine (self-serving), and increased hypoxanthine release rate per cell (partner-serving). However, increased release rate was due to increased cell size accompanied by increased lysine utilization per birth. Consequently, total hypoxanthine release rate per lysine utilization (defined as 'exchange ratio') remained unchanged. Indeed, this mutation did not increase the steady state growth rate of partner, and is thus solely self-serving during long-term growth. By extension, reduced benefit production rate by an individual may not imply cheating.
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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.