Abstract
Cells that reside within a community can cooperate and also compete with each other for resources. It remains unclear how these opposing interactions are resolved at the population level. Here we investigate such an internal conflict within a microbial (Bacillus subtilis) biofilm community: cells in the biofilm periphery not only protect interior cells from external attack but also starve them through nutrient consumption. We discover that this conflict between protection and starvation is resolved through emergence of long-range metabolic co-dependence between peripheral and interior cells. As a result, biofilm growth halts periodically, increasing nutrient availability for the sheltered interior cells. We show that this collective oscillation in biofilm growth benefits the community in the event of a chemical attack. These findings indicate that oscillations support population-level conflict resolution by coordinating competing metabolic demands in space and time, suggesting new strategies to control biofilm growth.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 550-554 |
| Number of pages | 5 |
| Journal | Nature |
| Volume | 523 |
| Issue number | 7562 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jul 30 2015 |
Funding
Acknowledgements We would like to thank K. Süel, T. Çag˘atay, R. Wollman, T. Hwa and M. Elowitz for comments during the writing of the manuscript. A.P. is a Simons Foundation Fellow of the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation. J.H. is supported by the UCSD Cell and Molecular Genetics Training Grant. J.G.-O. is supported by the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (Spain) and FEDER, under project FIS2012-37655-C02-01, and by the ICREA Academia Programme. This research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of General Medical Sciences Grant R01 GM088428 and the National Science Foundation Grant MCB-1450867 (both to G.M.S.).
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General