Prajapat Mahendra Kumar, Shroff Isha, Brajesh R G, Saini Supreet
Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai - 400 076, India.
School of Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, D. Y. Patil University, Navi, Mumbai - 400614, India.
Mol Biosyst. 2016 Oct 18;12(11):3338-3346. doi: 10.1039/c6mb00427j.
Cooperation benefits individual cells in a microbial population by helping accomplish tasks which are difficult or non-beneficial for individuals in the population to carry out by themselves. Hence, numerous examples exist of bacteria cooperating and working towards a common objective. The sharing of a common public good via quorum sensing is one of the ways of cooperation among individuals of many microbial populations. However, cheaters exploit cooperators in a population by not contributing to the production of the common goods but enjoy benefits from goods secreted by cooperating individuals. Thus, compared to cooperators, cheaters exhibit a fitness advantage. This suggests that in a population of cooperators invaded by cheaters, the cheaters should be naturally selected for. Instead, however, cooperation is ubiquitous and occurs in many species at various levels of biological organization. So, the question thus arises that what sort of strategies do these microorganisms employ to survive in the presence of cheaters? We try to answer this question here by mathematical analysis of a strategy used in microbial populations where public benefit received by cheaters is restrained to limit cheater invasion. Our results suggest that individuals exhibiting a little selfishness while still contributing to the population are best suited to resist cheater invasion.
合作通过帮助完成群体中的个体独自执行困难或无益处的任务，使微生物群体中的个体细胞受益。因此，存在大量细菌合作并朝着共同目标努力的例子。通过群体感应共享共同的公共物品是许多微生物群体中个体之间的合作方式之一。然而，作弊者通过不参与公共物品的生产来利用群体中的合作者，但却享受合作个体分泌的物品带来的益处。因此，与合作者相比，作弊者表现出适应性优势。这表明在一个被作弊者入侵的合作者群体中，作弊者应该会被自然选择。然而，相反的是，合作无处不在，并且在许多生物组织层次的物种中都存在。那么，问题就出现了，这些微生物采用了什么样的策略在作弊者存在的情况下生存呢？我们在这里试图通过对微生物群体中使用的一种策略进行数学分析来回答这个问题，在这种策略中，作弊者获得的公共利益受到限制以限制作弊者的入侵。我们的结果表明，表现出一点自私但仍为群体做出贡献的个体最适合抵抗作弊者的入侵。
