Long-Term Cellulose Enrichment Selects for Highly Cellulolytic Consortia and Competition for Public Goods

Lewin, Gina R.; Davis, Nicole M.; McDonald, Bradon R.; Book, Adam J.; Chevrette, Marc G.; Suh, Steven; Boll, Ardina; Currie, Cameron R.

doi:10.1128/msystems.01519-21

Cited by 8 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 90 publications

(104 reference statements)

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“…Conversely, on complex substrates, the ability to use the substrate would be a more important driving force. Since cellulases are phylogenetically limited in distribution ( 19 ), we hypothesize that the bacteria that initially grow will be those that can degrade cellulose similar to what Lewin et al observed ( 14 ). Frequent disturbances should select for bacteria that can directly use cellulose.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 60%

“…The bacterial community used here was previously enriched on cellulose as reported by Lewin et al ( 13 , 14 ). Briefly, approximately 3 mg of refuse dump originating from A. colombica refuse piles was added to test tubes containing 5 mL of M63 minimal media and a 1 × 10 cm strip of Whatman Grade 1 cellulose filter paper (GE Healthcare Life Sciences, Pittsburgh, PA).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To address this gap in knowledge, we examined the effects of disturbance on a bacterial community enriched from the refuse pile of the leaf-cutter ant Atta colombica that had previously been passaged in the lab on minimal media and cellulose by Lewin et al ( 13 , 14 ). Leaf-cutter ant refuse piles are composed of discarded plant biomass that has been partially degraded by the ants’ mutualistic fungal cultivar, Leucoagaricus gongylophorus ( 15 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Previous work has demonstrated that these refuse piles are enriched with plant biomass-degrading microbes ( 16 , 17 ). Focusing on bacterial communities derived from leaf-cutter ant refuse piles, Lewin et al experimentally evolved cellulose-degrading bacterial communities and investigated their compositional dynamics and cellulolytic abilities ( 13 , 14 ). During each passage, a portion of the community was aliquoted into a new test tube containing fresh minimal media and a new strip of cellulose.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, cellulolytic and noncellulolytic microbes compete for cellobiose, and these interactions may impact the community’s composition ( 20 , 21 ). Lewin et al ( 14 ) evaluated the successional dynamics in this microcosm by measuring the relative abundance of 16S rRNA genes every day for a week and found that a Cellvibrio operational taxonomic unit (OTU) was more abundant up to 48–72 hours, before other OTUs became more abundant ( 14 ). This finding suggests that a cellulose degrader must proliferate and produce cellulases before noncellulolytic opportunists can take advantage of liberated cellobiose or metabolic byproducts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Disturbance–diversity relationships of microbial communities change based on growth substrate

Hoang,

Wilson,

Scheftgen

et al. 2024

mSystems

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Disturbance events can impact ecological community dynamics. Understanding how communities respond to disturbances and how those responses can vary is a challenge in microbial ecology. In this study, we grew a previously enriched specialized microbial community on either cellulose or glucose as a sole carbon source and subjected them to one of five different disturbance regimes of varying frequencies ranging from low to high. Using 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing, we show that the community structure is largely driven by substrate, but disturbance frequency affects community composition and successional dynamics. When grown on cellulose, bacteria in the genera Cellvibrio , Lacunisphaera , and Asticcacaulis are the most abundant microbes. However, Lacunisphaera is only abundant in the lower disturbance frequency treatments, while Asticcacaulis is more abundant in the highest disturbance frequency treatment. When grown on glucose, the most abundant microbes are two Pseudomonas sequence variants and a Cohnella sequence variant that is only abundant in the highest disturbance frequency treatment. Communities grown on cellulose exhibited a greater range of diversity (1.95–7.33 Hill 1 diversity) that peaks at the intermediate disturbance frequency treatment or one disturbance every 3 days. Communities grown on glucose, however, ranged from 1.63 to 5.19 Hill 1 diversity with peak diversity at the greatest disturbance frequency treatment. These results demonstrate that the dynamics of a microbial community can vary depending on substrate and the disturbance frequency and may potentially explain the variety of diversity–disturbance relationships observed in microbial systems. IMPORTANCE A generalizable diversity–disturbance relationship (DDR) of microbial communities remains a contentious topic. Various microbial systems have different DDRs. Rather than finding support or refuting specific DDRs, we investigated the underlying factors that lead to different DDRs. In this study, we measured a cellulose-enriched microbial community’s response to a range of disturbance frequencies from high to low, across two different substrates: cellulose and glucose. We demonstrate that the community displays a unimodal DDR when grown on cellulose and a monotonically increasing DDR when grown on glucose. Our findings suggest that the same community can display different DDRs. These results suggest that the range of DDRs we observe across different microbial systems may be due to the nutritional resources microbial communities can access and the interactions between bacteria and their environment.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 60%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%