Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Department of Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, and Statistics, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, United States of America.
PLoS Comput Biol. 2022 Jul 28;18(7):e1010292. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1010292. eCollection 2022 Jul.
The evolutionary consequences of quorum sensing in regulating bacterial cooperation are not fully understood. In this study, we reveal unexpected effects of regulating public good production through quorum sensing on bacterial population dynamics, showing that quorum sensing can be a collectively harmful alternative to unregulated production. We analyze a birth-death model of bacterial population dynamics accounting for public good production and the presence of non-producing cheaters. Our model demonstrates that when demographic noise is a factor, the consequences of controlling public good production according to quorum sensing depend on the cost of public good production and the growth rate of populations in the absence of public goods. When public good production is inexpensive, quorum sensing is a destructive alternative to unconditional production, in terms of the mean population extinction time. When costs are higher, quorum sensing becomes a constructive strategy for the producing strain, both stabilizing cooperation and decreasing the risk of population extinction.
群体感应调控细菌合作的进化后果尚不完全清楚。在本研究中，我们揭示了通过群体感应调节公共利益生产对细菌种群动态的意外影响，表明群体感应可能是一种对不受监管生产的集体有害替代。我们分析了一个考虑公共利益生产和非生产性骗子存在的细菌种群动态的生死模型。我们的模型表明，当人口统计学噪声是一个因素时，根据群体感应控制公共利益生产的后果取决于公共利益生产的成本和没有公共利益时种群的增长率。当公共利益生产成本较低时，群体感应是无条件生产的破坏性替代方案，就种群灭绝时间的平均值而言。当成本较高时，群体感应成为产生菌株的建设性策略，既稳定合作，又降低种群灭绝的风险。
