Microbial wars: Competition in ecological niches and within the microbiome

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Abstract

Many microbial communities live in highly competitive surroundings, in which the fight for resources determines their survival and genetic persistence. Humans live in a close relationship with microbial communities, which includes the health- and disease-determining interactions with our microbiome. Accordingly, the understanding of microbial competitive activities are essential at physiological and pathophysiological levels. Here we provide a brief overview on microbial competition and discuss some of its roles and consequences that directly affect humans.

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Most cited references 34

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A functional perspective on phenotypic heterogeneity in microorganisms.

Martin Ackermann (2015)

Most microbial communities consist of a genetically diverse assembly of different organisms, and the level of genetic diversity plays an important part in community properties and functions. However, biological diversity also arises at a lower level of biological organization, between genetically identical cells that reside in the same microenvironment. In this Review, I outline the molecular mechanisms responsible for phenotypic heterogeneity and discuss how phenotypic heterogeneity allows genotypes to persist in fluctuating environments. I also describe how it promotes interactions between phenotypic subpopulations in clonal groups, providing microbial groups with new functionality.

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The Ecology and Evolution of Microbial Competition.

Melanie Ghoul, Sara Mitri (2016)

Microbes are typically surrounded by different strains and species with whom they compete for scarce nutrients and limited space. Given such challenging living conditions, microbes have evolved many phenotypes with which they can outcompete and displace their neighbours: secretions to harvest resources, loss of costly genes whose products can be obtained from others, stabbing and poisoning neighbouring cells, or colonising spaces while preventing others from doing so. These competitive phenotypes appear to be common, although evidence suggests that, over time, competition dies down locally, often leading to stable coexistence of genetically distinct lineages. Nevertheless, the selective forces acting on competition and the resulting evolutionary fates of the different players depend on ecological conditions in a way that is not yet well understood. Here, we highlight open questions and theoretical predictions of the long-term dynamics of competition that remain to be tested. Establishing a clearer understanding of microbial competition will allow us to better predict the behaviour of microbes, and to control and manipulate microbial communities for industrial, environmental, and medical purposes.

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Cooperation and conflict in quorum-sensing bacterial populations.

Stephen P Diggle, Ashleigh S Griffin, Genevieve S Campbell … (2007)

It has been suggested that bacterial cells communicate by releasing and sensing small diffusible signal molecules in a process commonly known as quorum sensing (QS). It is generally assumed that QS is used to coordinate cooperative behaviours at the population level. However, evolutionary theory predicts that individuals who communicate and cooperate can be exploited. Here we examine the social evolution of QS experimentally in the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and show that although QS can provide a benefit at the group level, exploitative individuals can avoid the cost of producing the QS signal or of performing the cooperative behaviour that is coordinated by QS, and can therefore spread. We also show that a solution to the problem of exploitation is kin selection, if interacting bacterial cells tend to be close relatives. These results show that the problem of exploitation, which has been the focus of considerable attention in animal communication, also arises in bacteria.

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Author and article information

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Microb Cell

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Microb Cell

Journal ID (pmc): Microb Cell

Journal ID (publisher-id): Microb Cell

Title: Microbial Cell

Publisher: Shared Science Publishers OG

ISSN (Electronic): 2311-2638

Publication date (Electronic, pub): 07 May 2018

Publication date (Electronic, collection): 07 May 2018

Volume: 5

Issue: 5

Pages: 215-219

Affiliations

[1 ]Institute of Molecular Biosciences, University of Graz, Graz, Austria.

[2 ]BioTechMed Graz, Graz, Austria.

Author notes

* E-mail: carmonag@ 123456uni-graz.at;

# E-mail: madeo@ 123456uni-graz.at

Conflict of interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Please cite this article as: Maria A. Bauer, Katharina Kainz, Didac Carmona-Gutierrez and Frank Madeo ( 2018). Microbial wars: Competition in ecological niches and within the microbiome. Microbial Cell 5(5): 215-219. doi: 10.15698/mic2018.05.628

Article

Publisher ID: MIC0178E127

DOI: 10.15698/mic2018.05.628

PMC ID: 5961915

PubMed ID: 29796386

SO-VID: 6779684c-dfc3-4955-bce2-01b3586237cf

License:

This is an open-access article released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are acknowledged.

History

Date received : 23 April 2018

Date accepted : 03 May 2018

Funding

FM is grateful to the Austrian Science Fund FWF (Austria) for grants, P29262, P29203 P27893, and ‘SFB Lipotox’ (F3012), grant DK Metabolic and Cardiovascular Diseases (W 1226) funded by the FWF to K.K. and F.M. as well as to BMWFW and the Karl-Franzens University for grants ‘Unkonventionelle Forschung’ and flysleep. FM acknowledges support from NAWI Graz and the BioTechMed-Graz flagship project "EPIAge".

Microbial wars: Competition in ecological niches and within the microbiome

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Abstract

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Tick microbiome

Most cited references 34

A functional perspective on phenotypic heterogeneity in microorganisms.

The Ecology and Evolution of Microbial Competition.

Cooperation and conflict in quorum-sensing bacterial populations.

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