Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Sci Rep. 2020 Feb 21;10(1):3154. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-59635-7.
Virulent phages can expose their bacterial hosts to devastating epidemics, in principle leading to complete elimination of their hosts. Although experiments indeed confirm a large reduction of susceptible bacteria, there are no reports of complete extinctions. We here address this phenomenon from the perspective of spatial organization of bacteria and how this can influence the final survival of them. By modelling the transient dynamics of bacteria and phages when they are introduced into an environment with finite resources, we quantify how time delayed lysis, the spatial separation of initial bacterial positions, and the self-protection of bacteria growing in spherical colonies favour bacterial survival. Our results suggest that spatial structures on the millimetre and submillimetre scale play an important role in maintaining microbial diversity.
烈性噬菌体可以使细菌宿主面临毁灭性的传染病，原则上会导致其宿主的完全灭绝。尽管实验确实证实了易感细菌的大量减少，但没有完全灭绝的报告。我们从细菌的空间组织以及这种组织如何影响它们的最终生存的角度来解决这个问题。通过对有限资源环境中引入细菌和噬菌体时的瞬态动力学进行建模，我们定量分析了延迟裂解、初始细菌位置的空间分离以及在球形菌落中生长的细菌的自我保护如何有利于细菌的生存。我们的研究结果表明，毫米和亚毫米级别的空间结构在维持微生物多样性方面发挥着重要作用。
