ArticlePLoS computational biology2019
Syntrophy emerges spontaneously in complex metabolic systems.
Article in PLoS computational biology, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed.
- Host-initiated microbial association leads to stable ectosymbiosis in an ecological model.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Induced endosymbiosis between a fungus and bacterium reveals a shift from antagonism to commensalism.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Competition and cooperation: The plasticity of bacterial interactions across environments.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Symbioses between fungi and bacteria: from mechanisms to impacts on biodiversity.Current opinion in microbiology · 2024Review
- The sparse macroecology of microbiology.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Closed ecosystems extract energy through self-organized nutrient cycles.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Metabolic compatibility and the rarity of prokaryote endosymbioses.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Eco-evolutionary modelling of microbial syntrophy indicates the robustness of cross-feeding over cross-facilitation.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- A Framework for the Systematic Selection of Biosensor Chassis for Environmental Synthetic Biology.ACS synthetic biology · 2022Review
- Prevalent emergence of reciprocity among cross-feeding bacteria.ISME communications · 2022Article
- Competition for nutrients increases invasion resistance during assembly of microbial communities.Molecular ecology · 2022Article
- Higher-order effects, continuous species interactions, and trait evolution shape microbial spatial dynamics.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Positive interactions are common among culturable bacteria.Science advances · 2021Article
- Fungal biodiversity and conservation mycology in light of new technology, big data, and changing attitudes.Current biology : CB · 2021Review
- Symbiosis and the Anthropocene.Symbiosis (Philadelphia, Pa.) · 2021Article
- Using Structural Equation Modeling to Understand Interactions Between Bacterial and Archaeal Populations and Volatile Fatty Acid Proportions in the Rumen.Frontiers in microbiology · 2021Article
- The Syntrophy hypothesis for the origin of eukaryotes revisited.Nature microbiology · 2020Review
- A riboswitch gives rise to multi-generational phenotypic heterogeneity in an auxotrophic bacterium.Nature communications · 2020Article
- Synthetic Biology for Terraformation Lessons from Mars, Earth, and the Microbiome.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
- From Microbial Communities to Distributed Computing Systems.Frontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology · 2020Review
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4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Syntrophy allows a microbial community as a whole to survive in an environment, even though individual microbes cannot. The metabolic interdependence typical of syntrophy is thought to arise from the accumulation of degenerative mutations during the sustained co-evolution of initially self-sufficient organisms. An alternative and underexplored possibility is that syntrophy can emerge spontaneously in communities of organisms that did not co-evolve. Here, we study this de novo origin of syntrophy using experimentally validated computational techniques to predict an organism's viability from its metabolic reactions. We show that pairs of metabolisms that are randomly sampled from a large space of possible metabolism and viable on specific primary carbon sources often become viable on new carbon sources by exchanging metabolites. The same biochemical reactions that are required for viability on primary carbon sources also confer viability on novel carbon sources. Our observations highlight a new and important avenue for the emergence of metabolic adaptations and novel ecological interactions.
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