ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2023
Interspecies interactions determine growth dynamics of biopolymer-degrading populations in microbial communities.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2023. 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.
- Alginate foraging is conserved in geographically and taxonomically distinct ruminant microbiomes.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Physical encounters impose a consistency-amount trade-off on bacterial group formation in marine environments.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- SubCom analysis: dissecting microbial community functions into taxon-specific contributions and interaction contexts.Microbiome · 2026Article
- Metabolic feedbacks drive population dynamics and can lead to oscillations among leaf bacteria.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Study of Microbial Communities in the Soda Lake of Isabel Island: Identification of Polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB) Degrading Enzymes.Environmental microbiology reports · 2026Article
- Carbon substrate type shapes spatial self-organization in a multi-species biofilm community.The ISME journal · 2026Article
- Hypersensitivity of chitin degradation to initial species densities due to monomer diffusion.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Spatial structure: shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2026Review
- Microbial cohorts: bringing ecological meaning to the modularity concept of co-occurrence networks.ISME communications · 2026Article
- Strengthen or Weaken: Evolutionary Directions of Cross-Feeding After Formation.Environmental microbiology reports · 2025Review
- Mutualism between degraders and nondegraders stabilizes the function of a natural biopolymer-degrading community.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- A bloom of a single bacterium shapes the microbiome during outdoor diatom cultivation collapse.mSystems · 2025Article
- Branched-chain amino acid metabolism supports Roseobacteraceae positive interactions in marine biofilms.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2025Article
- Decoding emergent properties of microbial community functions through subcommunity observations and interpretable machine learning.The ISME journal · 2025Article
- Synergistic biodegradation of polyethylene by experimentally evolved bacterial biofilms.The ISME journal · 2025Article
- Deciphering microbial spatial organization: insights from synthetic and engineered communities.ISME communications · 2025Review
- Article
- Substrate complexity buffers negative interactions in a synthetic community of leaf litter degraders.FEMS microbiology ecology · 2024Article
- Constructions of quorum sensing signaling network for activated sludge microbial community.ISME communications · 2024Article
- Interspecies interactions determine growth dynamics of biopolymer-degrading populations in microbial communities.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
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Abstract
Microbial communities perform essential ecosystem functions such as the remineralization of organic carbon that exists as biopolymers. The first step in mineralization is performed by biopolymer degraders, which harbor enzymes that can break down polymers into constituent oligo- or monomeric forms. The released nutrients not only allow degraders to grow, but also promote growth of cells that either consume the degradation products, i.e., exploiters, or consume metabolites released by the degraders or exploiters, i.e., scavengers. It is currently not clear how such remineralizing communities assemble at the microscale-how interactions between the different guilds influence their growth and spatial distribution, and hence the development and dynamics of the community. Here, we address this knowledge gap by studying marine microbial communities that grow on the abundant marine biopolymer alginate. We used batch growth assays and microfluidics coupled to time-lapse microscopy to quantitatively investigate growth and spatial distribution of single cells. We found that the presence of exploiters or scavengers alters the spatial distribution of degrader cells. In general, exploiters and scavengers-which we collectively refer to as cross-feeder cells-slowed down the growth of degrader cells. In addition, coexistence with cross-feeders altered the production of the extracellular enzymes that break down polymers by degrader cells. Our findings reveal that ecological interactions by nondegrading community members have a profound impact on the functions of microbial communities that remineralize carbon biopolymers in nature.
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Registered trials
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