ArticleNature communications2025
Metabolic interplay drives population cycles in a cross-feeding microbial community.
Article in Nature communications, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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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.
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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
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Soil-derived microbiota induces T regulatory cells and protect against mouse colitis, metabolic disease, and sepsis.Gut microbes · 2026Article
- From diet to function: using synthetic microbial communities to map gut microbial interactions.NPJ biofilms and microbiomes · 2026Review
- Metabolic feedbacks drive population dynamics and can lead to oscillations among leaf bacteria.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Burden-aware feedback control of microbial consortia.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Physics-constrained neural ordinary differential equation models to discover and predict microbial community dynamics.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Influence of cell-cell distance on the ecology and evolution of microbial communities.The ISME journal · 2026Review
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5 authors.
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Abstract
Population cycles are prevalent in ecosystems and play key roles in determining their functions. While multiple mechanisms have been theoretically shown to generate population cycles, there are limited examples of mutualisms driving self-sustained oscillations. Using an engineered microbial community that cross-feeds essential amino acids, we experimentally demonstrate cycles in strain abundance that are robust across environmental conditions. A nonlinear dynamical model that incorporates the experimentally observed cross-inhibition of amino acid production recapitulates the population cycles. The model shows that the cycles represent internally generated relaxation oscillations, which emerge when fast resource dynamics with positive feedback drive slow changes in strain abundance. The temporal structure of the resource dynamics prevents nonproducing cheaters from persisting within the oscillating community. Our findings highlight the critical role of resource dynamics and feedback in shaping population cycles in microbial communities and have implications for biotechnology.
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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.