Dal Co Alma, Ackermann Martin, van Vliet Simon
Department of Computational Biology, University of Lausanne, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland; Department of Environmental Microbiology, Eawag, 8600 Duebendorf, Switzerland.
Cell Syst. 2023 Feb 15;14(2):98-108. doi: 10.1016/j.cels.2022.12.009.
Most bacteria live in dense, spatially structured communities such as biofilms. The high density allows cells to alter the local microenvironment, whereas the limited mobility can cause species to become spatially organized. Together, these factors can spatially organize metabolic processes within microbial communities so that cells in different locations perform different metabolic reactions. The overall metabolic activity of a community depends both on how metabolic reactions are arranged in space and on how they are coupled, i.e., how cells in different regions exchange metabolites. Here, we review mechanisms that lead to the spatial organization of metabolic processes in microbial systems. We discuss factors that determine the length scales over which metabolic activities are arranged in space and highlight how the spatial organization of metabolic processes affects the ecology and evolution of microbial communities. Finally, we define key open questions that we believe should be the main focus of future research.
大多数细菌生活在密集的、具有空间结构的群落中，如生物膜。高密度使细胞能够改变局部微环境，而有限的移动性会导致物种在空间上形成组织。这些因素共同作用，可以在微生物群落中对代谢过程进行空间组织，使不同位置的细胞进行不同的代谢反应。群落的整体代谢活性既取决于代谢反应在空间中的排列方式，也取决于它们的耦合方式，即不同区域的细胞如何交换代谢物。在这里，我们综述了导致微生物系统中代谢过程空间组织的机制。我们讨论了决定代谢活动在空间中排列的长度尺度的因素，并强调了代谢过程的空间组织如何影响微生物群落的生态和进化。最后，我们定义了一些关键的开放性问题，我们认为这些问题应该是未来研究的主要重点。
