Signaling in microbial communities with open boundaries
Signaling in microbial communities with open boundaries
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DOI：
10.1016/j.bpj.2023.06.002
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发表时间：
2023-07-11
影响因子：
3.4
通讯作者：
Mugler，Andrew
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Winkle，James J.;Saha，Soutick;Mugler，Andrew
微生物群落如菌群或生物膜通常在固体基质和开放流体流的界面处形成。同时，在实验室环境中，这些社区通常使用具有介质流和开放边界的微流体设备进行研究。因此，这些社区内的细胞外信号传导受到与经典的封闭边界系统（如发育中的胚胎或组织）内的信号传导不同的约束，但通过比较研究不足。在这里，我们使用数学建模来展示平流扩散边界流和种群几何形状如何影响单层微生物群落中的细胞-细胞信号。我们揭示的条件下，细胞间的信号长度仅取决于人口的几何形状，而不是扩散或降解，如通常预期的。我们进一步证明，扩散耦合与边界流可以产生信号梯度内的同基因的人口，即使没有流动的人口。我们使用我们的理论来提供新的见解的信号机制发表的实验结果，我们做了几个实验验证的预测。我们的研究强调了在模拟微生物细胞-细胞信号传导时仔细评估边界动力学和环境几何学的重要性，并为自然和合成系统中的细胞行为研究提供了信息。
Microbial communities such as swarms or biofilms often form at the interfaces of solid substrates and open fluid flows. At the same time, in laboratory environments these communities are commonly studied using microfluidic devices with media flows and open boundaries. Extracellular signaling within these communities is therefore subject to different constraints than signaling within classic, closed-boundary systems such as developing embryos or tissues, yet is understudied by comparison. Here, we use mathematical modeling to show how advective-diffusive boundary flows and population geometry impact cell-cell signaling in monolayer microbial communities. We reveal conditions where the intercellular signaling lengthscale depends solely on the population geometry and not on diffusion or degradation, as commonly expected. We further demonstrate that diffusive coupling with the boundary flow can produce signal gradients within an isogenic population, even when there is no flow within the population. We use our theory to provide new insights into the signaling mechanisms of published experimental results, and we make several experimentally verifiable predictions. Our research highlights the importance of carefully evaluating boundary dynamics and environmental geometry when modeling microbial cell-cell signaling and informs the study of cell behaviors in both natural and synthetic systems.