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Competition and cooperation: the plasticity of bacterial interactions across environments
Umeå University, Faculty of Science and Technology, Department of Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics. Integrated Science Lab (IceLab), Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden.
Los Alamos National Laboratory, NM, Los Alamos, United States.
Umeå University, Faculty of Science and Technology, Department of Physics. Integrated Science Lab (IceLab), Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden.ORCID iD: 0000-0003-3174-8145
Umeå University, Faculty of Medicine, Molecular Infection Medicine Sweden (MIMS). Umeå University, Faculty of Medicine, Umeå Centre for Microbial Research (UCMR). Umeå University, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Molecular Biology (Faculty of Medicine).ORCID iD: 0000-0002-6716-8284
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2025 (English)In: PloS Computational Biology, ISSN 1553-734X, E-ISSN 1553-7358, Vol. 21, no 7, article id e1013213Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Bacteria live in diverse communities, forming complex networks of interacting species. A central question in bacterial ecology is whether species engage in cooperative or competitive interactions. But this question often neglects the role of the environment. Here, we use genome-scale metabolic networks from two different open-access collections (AGORA and CarveMe) to assess pairwise interactions of different microbes in varying environmental conditions (provision of different environmental compounds). By computationally simulating thousands of environments for 10,000 pairs of bacteria from each collection, we found that most pairs were able to both compete and cooperate depending on the availability of environmental resources. This modeling approach allowed us to determine commonalities between environments that could facilitate the potential for cooperation or competition between a pair of species. Namely, cooperative interactions, especially obligate, were most common in less diverse environments. Further, as compounds were removed from the environment, we found interactions tended to degrade towards obligacy. However, we also found that on average at least one compound could be removed from an environment to switch the interaction from competition to facultative cooperation or vice versa. Together our approach indicates a high degree of plasticity in microbial interactions in response to the availability of environmental resources.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2025. Vol. 21, no 7, article id e1013213
National Category
Bioinformatics (Computational Biology) Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-242443DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1013213ISI: 001534820000002PubMedID: 40705801Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-105011416336OAI: oai:DiVA.org:umu-242443DiVA, id: diva2:1986406
Funder
The Kempe Foundations, JCK-2129.2Swedish Research Council, 2021-06602Available from: 2025-07-31 Created: 2025-07-31 Last updated: 2025-07-31Bibliographically approved

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Solowiej-Wedderburn, JosephineLizana, LudvigSchroeder, Bjoern O.Lind, Peter A.

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Solowiej-Wedderburn, JosephineLizana, LudvigSchroeder, Bjoern O.Lind, Peter A.Libby, Eric
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Department of Mathematics and Mathematical StatisticsDepartment of PhysicsMolecular Infection Medicine Sweden (MIMS)Umeå Centre for Microbial Research (UCMR)Department of Molecular Biology (Faculty of Medicine)Department of Molecular Biology (Faculty of Science and Technology)
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PloS Computational Biology
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