TY - JOUR
T1 - An Ecological Understanding of Quorum Sensing-Controlled Bacteriocin Synthesis
AU - Blanchard, Andrew E.
AU - Liao, Chen
AU - Lu, Ting
N1 - The authors would like to thank National Science Foundation (1227034 and 1553649), Office of Naval Research (N000141612525), American Heart Association (12SDG12090025), and Brain and Behavior Research Foundation for their financial support.
Dr. Ting Lu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Bioengineering and the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his B.S. in Physics from Zhejiang University (China) in 2002 and his Ph.D. in Biophysics from the University of California at San Diego in 2007. Prior to joining UIUC in 2011, Dr. Lu was a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Wyss Institute at Harvard. Dr. Lu’s research program focuses on the analysis, construction and exploitation of bacterial gene regulatory networks for cellular functionality programming. In particular, he is interested in advancing the fundamental understanding and engineering capability of bacterial communities. Dr. Lu has received several competitive awards for his research, including National Science Foundation CAREER Award, Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, American Heart Association National Scientist Development Grant, and NARSAD Young Investigator Award from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation.
PY - 2016/9/1
Y1 - 2016/9/1
N2 - Bacteriocins are common antimicrobial agents that bacteria secrete to suppress the growth of competitors. Their production is often conditional, governed by underlying quorum sensing regulatory circuitry. Although the molecular underpinnings of controlled bacteriocin synthesis have been increasingly revealed, its quantitative ecological role has not been well characterized. Here, we present an integrated model of bacteriocin synthesis in the context of two-species contests where one species opposes the other for resource utilization. In a well-mixed environment, we find that bacteriocin production can contribute positively or negatively to the outcome of species competition, determined by the tradeoff between the benefit of bacteriocins in mediating competition and the fitness cost due to metabolic load. The tradeoff also determines the relative advantage between constitutive bacteriocin production and quorum sensing (QS) controlled production. Interestingly, under the naturally occurring scenario where bacteriocin production has a high cost, QS controlled synthesis outperforms constitutive, which offers a quantitative interpretation for the wide prevalence of density-related bacteriocin production in nature. Furthermore, by extending our study to include spatial dynamics of competing communities, we show that our finding, the superiority of QS controlled synthesis in the high cost regime, remains valid for complex settings. This work provides ecological insights into bacteriocin synthesis by revealing its cost and benefit during population growth, advancing our fundamental understanding of bacteriocin-mediated community organization as well as microbial ecology in general.
AB - Bacteriocins are common antimicrobial agents that bacteria secrete to suppress the growth of competitors. Their production is often conditional, governed by underlying quorum sensing regulatory circuitry. Although the molecular underpinnings of controlled bacteriocin synthesis have been increasingly revealed, its quantitative ecological role has not been well characterized. Here, we present an integrated model of bacteriocin synthesis in the context of two-species contests where one species opposes the other for resource utilization. In a well-mixed environment, we find that bacteriocin production can contribute positively or negatively to the outcome of species competition, determined by the tradeoff between the benefit of bacteriocins in mediating competition and the fitness cost due to metabolic load. The tradeoff also determines the relative advantage between constitutive bacteriocin production and quorum sensing (QS) controlled production. Interestingly, under the naturally occurring scenario where bacteriocin production has a high cost, QS controlled synthesis outperforms constitutive, which offers a quantitative interpretation for the wide prevalence of density-related bacteriocin production in nature. Furthermore, by extending our study to include spatial dynamics of competing communities, we show that our finding, the superiority of QS controlled synthesis in the high cost regime, remains valid for complex settings. This work provides ecological insights into bacteriocin synthesis by revealing its cost and benefit during population growth, advancing our fundamental understanding of bacteriocin-mediated community organization as well as microbial ecology in general.
KW - Bacteriocin
KW - Biosynthesis
KW - Competition
KW - Cost and benefit
KW - Mathematical modeling
KW - Quorum sensing
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84970946023&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84970946023&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s12195-016-0447-6
DO - 10.1007/s12195-016-0447-6
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84970946023
SN - 1865-5025
VL - 9
SP - 443
EP - 454
JO - Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering
JF - Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering
IS - 3
ER -