Journal
TRENDS IN MICROBIOLOGY
Volume 25, Issue 5, Pages 349-361Publisher
ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.tim.2017.02.015
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Funding
- Volkswagen Foundation [I/85 290]
- Max-Planck Society
- Jena School of Microbial Communication
- ETH Marie Curie COFUND Fellowship
- German Research Foundation [SFB 944/2-2016]
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The majority of known bacterial species cannot be cultivated under laboratory conditions. Here we argue that the adaptive emergence of obligate metabolic interactions in natural bacterial communities can explain this pattern. Bacteria commonly release metabolites into the external environment. Accumulating pools of extracellular metabolites create an ecological niche that benefits auxotrophic mutants, which have lost the ability to autonomously produce the corresponding metabolites. In addition to a diffusion-based metabolite transfer, auxotrophic cells can use contact-dependent means to obtain nutrients from other co-occurring cells. Spatial colocalisation and a continuous coevolution further increase the nutritional dependency and optimise fluxes through combined metabolic networks. Thus, bacteria likely function as networks of interacting cells that reciprocally exchange nutrients and biochemical functions rather than as physiologically autonomous units.
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