ArticleNature communications2020
Survival of the weakest in non-transitive asymmetric interactions among strains of E. coli.
Article in Nature communications, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed.
- Microbial degradation behaviour and interactions in efficient multi-compound VOCs removal.Antonie van Leeuwenhoek · 2026Article
- Long Run Non-Transitivity of Win Ratio and How to Rule It Out.Statistics in medicine · 2026Article
- Burden-aware feedback control of microbial consortia.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Current Status and Future Challenges in the Use of Bacteriocins to Modulate Ruminant Gut Microbiota.Probiotics and antimicrobial proteins · 2026Review
- Synthetic microbial consortia based on quorum-sensing for disease therapy.Bioresources and bioprocessing · 2025Review
- Advances in synthetic microbial ecosystems approach for studying ecological interactions and their influencing factors.Engineering microbiology · 2025Review
- Engineering coupled consortia-based biosensors for diagnostic.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Assembly of functional microbial ecosystems: from molecular circuits to communities.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2024Review
- Revisiting the Multifaceted Roles of Bacteriocins : The Multifaceted Roles of Bacteriocins.Microbial ecology · 2024Review
- Nutrients and flow shape the cyclic dominance games betweenPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Hosts winnow symbionts with multiple layers of absolute and conditional discrimination mechanisms.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- The space between us: Modeling spatial heterogeneity in synthetic microbial consortia dynamics.Biophysical reports · 2022Article
- Engineering microbial consortia with rationally designed cellular interactions.Current opinion in biotechnology · 2022Review
- Microcins reveal natural mechanisms of bacterial manipulation to inform therapeutic development.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2022Article
- Environment driven oscillation in an off-lattice May-Leonard model.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Mistakes can stabilise the dynamics of rock-paper-scissors games.PLoS computational biology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Hierarchical organization in ecology, whereby interactions are nested in a manner that leads to a dominant species, naturally result in the exclusion of all but the dominant competitor. Alternatively, non-hierarchical competitive dynamics, such as cyclical interactions, can sustain biodiversity. Here, we designed a simple microbial community with three strains of E. coli that cyclically interact through (i) the inhibition of protein production, (ii) the digestion of genomic DNA, and (iii) the disruption of the cell membrane. We find that intrinsic differences in these three major mechanisms of bacterial warfare lead to an unbalanced community that is dominated by the weakest strain. We also use a computational model to describe how the relative toxin strengths, initial fractional occupancies, and spatial patterns affect the maintenance of biodiversity. The engineering of active warfare between microbial species establishes a framework for exploration of the underlying principles that drive complex ecological interactions.
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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.