Journal
FRONTIERS IN MICROBIOLOGY
Volume 12, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
FRONTIERS MEDIA SA
DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2021.718082
Keywords
macroevolution; metabolism; innovation; diversification; niche construction; genotype-phenotype (G-P) map; genotype-by-environment (GxE) interaction; non-commutative epistasis
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Funding
- Human Frontier Science Program [RGY0077/2016]
- David and Lucile Packard foundation
- National Institutes of Health [1R35 GM133467-01]
- Templeton Foundation [61866]
- Donnelly Fellowship from Yale University
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This article discusses the macroevolutionary patterns and processes in microbial metabolism, including the evolution mechanisms of metabolic networks, environmental factors, selective pressures, and the role of niche construction. New hypotheses and methods are proposed to explore the impact of microbial innovation and diversification, aiming to stimulate systematic and quantitative characterization of macroevolutionary patterns and processes.
Microorganisms display a stunning metabolic diversity. Understanding the origin of this diversity requires understanding how macroevolutionary processes such as innovation and diversification play out in the microbial world. Metabolic networks, which govern microbial resource use, can evolve through different mechanisms, e.g., horizontal gene transfer or de novo evolution of enzymes and pathways. This process is governed by a combination of environmental factors, selective pressures, and the constraints imposed by the genetic architecture of metabolic networks. In addition, many independent results hint that the process of niche construction, by which organisms actively modify their own and each other's niches and selective pressures, could play a major role in microbial innovation and diversification. Yet, the general principles by which niche construction shapes microbial macroevolutionary patterns remain largely unexplored. Here, we discuss several new hypotheses and directions, and suggest metabolic modeling methods that could allow us to explore large-scale empirical genotype-phenotype-(G-P)-environment spaces in order to study the macroevolutionary effects of niche construction. We hope that this short piece will further stimulate a systematic and quantitative characterization of macroevolutionary patterns and processes in microbial metabolism.
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