Stability of Multispecies Bacterial Communities: Signaling Networks May Stabilize Microbiomes

Ádám Kerényi, Dóra Bihary, Vittorio Venturi and Sándor Pongor

PLOS ONE, 2013, vol. 8, issue 3, 1-10

Abstract: Multispecies bacterial communities can be remarkably stable and resilient even though they consist of cells and species that compete for environmental resources. In silico models suggest that common signals released into the environment may help selected bacterial species cluster at common locations and that sharing of public goods (i.e. molecules produced and released for mutual benefit) can stabilize this coexistence. In contrast, unilateral eavesdropping on signals produced by a potentially invading species may protect a community by keeping invaders away from limited resources. Shared bacterial signals, such as those found in quorum sensing systems, may thus play a key role in fine tuning competition and cooperation within multi-bacterial communities. We suggest that in addition to metabolic complementarity, signaling dynamics may be important in further understanding complex bacterial communities such as the human, animal as well as plant microbiomes.

Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0057947 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 57947&type=printable (application/pdf)

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:plo:pone00:0057947

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0057947

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().