Seto Mayumi, Kondoh Michio
Department of Chemistry, Biology, and Environmental Sciences, Nara Women's University, Nara, Japan.
Graduate School of Life Sciences, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan.
Ecol Lett. 2023 Oct;26(10):1714-1725. doi: 10.1111/ele.14287. Epub 2023 Jul 17.
Microbial life in low-energy ecosystems relies on individual energy conservation, optimizing energy use in response to interspecific competition and mutualistic interspecific syntrophy. Our study proposes a novel community-level strategy for increasing energy use efficiency. By utilizing an oxidation-reduction (redox) reaction network model that represents microbial redox metabolic interactions, we investigated multiple species-level competition and cooperation within the network. Our results suggest that microbial functional diversity allows for metabolic handoffs, which in turn leads to increased energy use efficiency. Furthermore, the mutualistic division of labour and the resulting complexity of redox pathways actively drive material cycling, further promoting energy exploitation. Our findings reveal the potential of self-organized ecological interactions to develop efficient energy utilization strategies, with important implications for microbial ecosystem functioning and the co-evolution of life and Earth.
低能量生态系统中的微生物生命依赖于个体的能量守恒，通过优化能量利用来应对种间竞争和互利共生的种间互养。我们的研究提出了一种提高能量利用效率的新型群落水平策略。通过利用一个代表微生物氧化还原代谢相互作用的氧化还原反应网络模型，我们研究了网络内多个物种水平的竞争与合作。我们的结果表明，微生物功能多样性允许代谢交接，进而提高能量利用效率。此外，互利的分工以及由此产生的氧化还原途径的复杂性积极推动物质循环，进一步促进能量开发。我们的研究结果揭示了自组织生态相互作用发展高效能量利用策略的潜力，对微生物生态系统功能以及生命与地球的共同进化具有重要意义。
