Evolutionary Game between Commensal and Pathogenic Microbes in Intestinal Microbiota

Amy Wu and David Ross
Additional contact information
Amy Wu: Material Measurement Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology, 100 Bureau Drive, Gaithersburg, MD 20899, USA
David Ross: Material Measurement Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology, 100 Bureau Drive, Gaithersburg, MD 20899, USA

Games, 2016, vol. 7, issue 3, 1-10

Abstract: The human intestinal microbiota plays a fundamental role in host health and is associated with many diseases when the homeostasis is disturbed. Although recent achievements in metagenomic sequencing have begun to reveal the variety of microbial composition associated with healthy and disease states, species-specific interactions and systematic dynamics still pose a great challenge to resolve the complexity of human microbiota. Using Clostridium difficile infection in human intestinal microbiota as an example, we apply evolutionary game theory to gain a fundamental understanding of the phenotypic variability and dynamic progression of microbiota. Here, microbiota dynamics are determined by the frequency-dependent fitness of each phenotypic population in the presence of the others. More specifically, the fitness is a function of phenotypic composition of the microbiota. We show how the phenotypic variability of microbiota can be explained by game theoretical approach. Knowledge of this study provides a new perspective in administrating antibiotic when dealing with pathogenic invasion. Instead of solely targeting to pathogens, therapies should aim at the whole ecosystem by reducing the fitness of pathogens compared to that of commensal microbes. In this case, the system will eradicate the pathogens by itself.

Keywords: evolutionary game theory; microbiota; commensal bacteria; pathogenic bacteria (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C C7 C70 C71 C72 C73 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/7/3/26/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/7/3/26/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jgames:v:7:y:2016:i:3:p:26-:d:78017

Access Statistics for this article

Games is currently edited by Ms. Susie Huang

More articles in Games from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().