Division of Biology and Biological Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, United States.
Department of Applied Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, United States.
Elife. 2018 May 29;7:e33099. doi: 10.7554/eLife.33099.
Individual microbial species are known to occupy distinct metabolic niches within multi-species communities. However, it has remained largely unclear whether metabolic specialization can similarly occur within a clonal bacterial population. More specifically, it is not clear what functions such specialization could provide and how specialization could be coordinated dynamically. Here, we show that exponentially growing cultures divide into distinct interacting metabolic subpopulations, including one population that produces acetate, and another population that differentially expresses metabolic genes for the production of acetoin, a pH-neutral storage molecule. These subpopulations exhibit distinct growth rates and dynamic interconversion between states. Furthermore, acetate concentration influences the relative sizes of the different subpopulations. These results show that clonal populations can use metabolic specialization to control the environment through a process of dynamic, environmentally-sensitive state-switching.
已知，在多物种群落中，各个微生物物种占据着不同的代谢小生境。然而，在一个克隆细菌群体中，代谢特化是否也同样会发生，在很大程度上仍不清楚。更具体地说，尚不清楚这种特化能提供什么功能，以及特化如何能动态地协调。在这里，我们表明，指数增长的培养物会分裂成不同的相互作用的代谢亚群，包括一个产生乙酸盐的群体，和另一个群体差异表达代谢基因来生产乙酰基，一种 pH 值中性的储存分子。这些亚群表现出不同的生长速度和状态之间的动态转换。此外，乙酸盐浓度会影响不同亚群的相对大小。这些结果表明，克隆种群可以通过一种动态的、环境敏感的状态转换过程，利用代谢特化来控制环境。
