ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2020
The microbial exometabolome: ecological resource and architect of microbial communities.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 55 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
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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
55 citing papers in PubMed, 109 citations in OpenAlex.
- Multi-omics insights into bacterial and fungal bioremediation of Potentially Toxic Elements (PTEs): a critical overview of their applications.World journal of microbiology & biotechnology · 2026Review
- Metabolic cross-talk promotes persistence ofScience advances · 2026Article
- Metabolic feedbacks drive population dynamics and can lead to oscillations among leaf bacteria.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Steering root-associated microbiomes via direct and soil legacy effects of neighbors.Microbiome · 2026Article
- Synergistic Consortia with Bacillus megaterium A14 Enhance Cadmium Immobilization in the Arachis hypogaea Rhizosphere.Current microbiology · 2026Article
- Exometabolome variation in the fungal pathogen of humansApplied and environmental microbiology · 2026Article
- Ecological Frameworks of Pathogen-Pathogen and Pathogen-Microbiome Interactions Within the Tick Holobiont.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Carbon substrate type shapes spatial self-organization in a multi-species biofilm community.The ISME journal · 2026Article
- Substrate complexity and species number jointly shift the balance between competition and facilitation in a chitin-degrading bacterial consortium.ISME communications · 2026Article
- Metabolic interplay in a synthetic consortium: insights into the mediating role of a minority species.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Integrating metagenome-scale metabolic models and metabolomics to explore candidate biochemical interactions in cultivatedISME communications · 2026Article
- Metabolic cross-talk promotes persistence ofbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Strengthen or Weaken: Evolutionary Directions of Cross-Feeding After Formation.Environmental microbiology reports · 2025Review
- Article
- Novel anaerobic selenium oxyanion reducers native to FGD wastewater for enhanced selenium removal.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2025Article
- MetaFlowTrain: a highly parallelized and modular fluidic system for studying exometabolite-mediated inter-organismal interactions.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Paradox of the Sub-Plankton: Plausible Mechanisms and Open Problems Underlying Strain-Level Diversity in Microbial Communities.Environmental microbiology · 2025Review
- Role of horizontal gene transfer and cooperation in rhizosphere microbiome assembly.Brazilian journal of microbiology : [publication of the Brazilian Society for Microbiology] · 2025Review
- Integrating network analysis with in vivo-in situ manipulation to elucidate microbiome dynamics in Aedes albopictus.FEMS microbiology letters · 2025Article
- Environment-mediated interactions cause an externalized and collective memory in bacteria.The ISME journal · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
All microorganisms release many metabolites, collectively known as the exometabolome. The resultant multi-way cross-feeding of metabolites among microorganisms distributes resources, thereby increasing total biomass of the microbial community, and promotes the recruitment and persistence of phylogenetically and functionally diverse taxa in microbial communities. Metabolite transfer can also select for evolutionary diversification, yielding multiple closely related but functionally distinct strains. Depending on starting conditions, the evolved strains may be auxotrophs requiring metabolic outputs from producer cells or, alternatively, display loss of complementary reactions in metabolic pathways, with increased metabolic efficiency. Metabolite cross-feeding is widespread in many microbial communities associated with animals and plants, including the animal gut microbiome, and these metabolic interactions can yield products valuable to the host. However, metabolite exchange between pairs of intracellular microbial taxa that share the same host cell or organ can be very limited compared to pairs of free-living microorganisms, perhaps as a consequence of host controls over the metabolic function of intracellular microorganisms. Priorities for future research include the development of tools for improved quantification of metabolite exchange in complex communities and greater integration of the roles of metabolic cross-feeding and other ecological processes, including priority effects and antagonistic interactions, in shaping microbial communities. This article is part of the theme issue 'Conceptual challenges in microbial community ecology'.
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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.