Invasion and Exclusion by Enterococcus faecalis in the Manduca gut community

调节微生物群落对人类健康的影响需要了解微生物群落对 入侵者，但对社区入侵的机制基础知之甚少。我们的目标是确定 遗传基础对入侵的简单模型，并确定了对六爪金龟肠道群落的影响 入侵宿主-群落复合体的新陈代谢组。 我们将识别与入侵有关的基因，然后确定它们在竞争与合作中的作用 社区及其对代谢组的影响，以产生关于信号分子作用的假设， 抗生素，以及社区互动中的营养物质。 该项目的创新源于对代谢物图谱的系统级分析与 简化论遗传分析，遗传学在社区一级表型的应用，量化 微生物种群在活体动物中的发光成像，以及尖端化学技术。这个 这项工作有可能推动微生物群落生态学领域的发展，因为它提供了一个基础 关于面对可能直接适用于人类健康的扰动时的社区行为的模型。

Modulating microbial communities for human health requires understanding the response of communities to invaders, but little is known about the mechanistic bases for community invasion. Our goal is to determine the genetic basis for invasion in the simple model, the gut community of Manduca sexta, and determine the impact of invasion on the meta-metabolome of the host-community complex. We will identify genes involved in invasion and then determine their role in competition and cooperation in the community and their impact on the metabolome to generate hypotheses about the role of signal molecules, antibiotics, and nutrients in community interactions. The project's innovation derives from the marriage of systems-level analysis of metabolite profiles with reductionist genetic analysis, the application of genetics to community-level phenotypes, quantification of microbial populations with luminescence imaging in live animals, and cutting edge chemical technology. The work has the potential to advance the field of microbial community ecology by providing a basis for deriving models about community behavior in the face of perturbation that may apply directly to human health.