BBSRC-NSF/BIO: The impact of public vs private metabolism on the stability of microbial communities within natural hosts

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This project generates enhanced understanding of how different microbial species cooperatively share nutrients. It adds to the knowledge base required to develop effective strategies to combat pathogens that exploit cooperative interactions to infect plants, animal and humans. By combining empirical experimental work and rigorous computational modelling, the research investigates how competition for limited nutrients influences the composition, stability and functioning of microbial communities. Tackling this problem requires students to be trained according to an interdisciplinary approach that combines synthetic biology, microbial population ecology, molecular biology and mathematical modeling. This project is training one graduate student and at least two undergraduate students in cutting-edge experimental and computational methods in microbial systems biology. The research results are being integrated into graduate and undergraduate classes, including a mathematical modeling course recently developed by the principal investigator. To broaden participation and enhance diversity, NSF-funded programs for women and minorities students are leveraged to identify and recruit project personnel. This project is a collaboration between researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (US) and the University of Exeter (UK). Complex communities of diverse microbial species play essential roles in the proper functioning of natural ecosystems and the health of plant, animal and human hosts which they inhabit. To survive and grow, microbes must acquire limited nutrients from their environment. Metabolic interactions such as nutrient competition are key to the formation, stability and functioning of microbial communities. Nutrient acquisition frequently involves secretion of costly metabolic compounds that capture or breakdown resources in the external environment. This cooperative strategy, termed “public metabolism”, is risky as the breakdown products can be lost into the environment or exploited by other species. Preliminary data support the hypothesis that nutrient acquisition strategies involving either public or private metabolism represent two opposing approaches to survival, the success of which is environment dependent. The goal of this project is to test this hypothesis by applying a combination of experimental and computational approaches to two tractable synthetic systems involving the environmental yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and the plant pathogen Magnaporthe oryzae. Both in vitro and in planta experiments will be performed and mathematically modeled to yield general conclusions about microbial interactions and community stability from system-specific observations.This collaborative US/UK project is supported by the US National Science Foundation and the UKRI Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.Within the US National Science Foundation this project is co-funded by the Systems and Synthetic Biology cluster in the Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences and the Integrative Ecological Physiology program in the Division of Integrative Organismal Systems.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.