The DOI matches its Crossref record; 45 of the 45 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Cooperation and conflict in microbial biofilms
Open accessAbstract
Biofilms, in which cells attach to surfaces and secrete slime (polymeric substances), are central to microbial life. Biofilms are often thought to require high levels of cooperation because extracellular polymeric substances are a shared resource produced by one cell that can be used by others. Here we examine this hypothesis by using a detailed individual-based simulation of a biofilm to investigate the outcome of evolutionary competitions between strains that differ in their level of polymer production. Our model includes a biochemical description of the carbon fluxes for growth and polymer production, and it explicitly calculates diffusion–reaction effects and the resulting solute gradients in the biofilm. An emergent property of these simple but realistic mechanistic assumptions is a strong evolutionary advantage to extracellular polymer production. Polymer secretion is altruistic to cells above a focal cell: it pushes later generations in their lineage up and out into better oxygen conditions, but it harms others; polymer production suffocates neighboring nonpolymer producers. This property, analogous to vertical growth in plants, suggests that polymer secretion provides a strong competitive advantage to cell lineages within mixed-genotype biofilms: global cooperation is not required. Our model fundamentally changes how biofilms are expected to respond to changing social conditions; the presence of multiple strains in a biofilm should promote rather than inhibit polymer secretion.
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Cites
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Cited by
Flemming, H.-C., & Wingender, J. (2010) · Nature Reviews Microbiology · doi:10.1038/nrmicro2415 · Cited by 10,137
Bacterial competition: surviving and thriving in the microbial jungle
Hibbing, M. E., Fuqua, C., Parsek, M. R., & Peterson, S. B. (2010) · Nature Reviews Microbiology · doi:10.1038/nrmicro2259 · Cited by 2,689
Nadell, C. D., Xavier, J. B., & Foster, K. R. (2009) · FEMS Microbiology Reviews · doi:10.1111/j.1574-6976.2008.00150.x · Cited by 667
Self-citationSpatiotemporal microbial evolution on antibiotic landscapes
Baym, M., Lieberman, T. D., Kelsic, E. D., Chait, R., Gross, R., Yelin, I., & Kishony, R. (2016) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.aag0822 · Cited by 538
The developmental model of microbial biofilms: ten years of a paradigm up for review
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Metadata
- Authors
- Xavier, J. B., & Foster, K. R.
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2007-01-16
- Volume
- 104
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 876-881
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- OpenAlex
- W2059685380
- Cited by
- 517
- References
- 45
- FWCI
- 8.62
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
