Multicellular behavior in bacteria: communication, cooperation, competition and cheating

Dunny, Gary M.; Brickman, Timothy J.; Dworkin, Martin

doi:10.1002/bies.20740

Cited by 95 publications

(79 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Lee et al (673) proposed that the existence of cheaters in a cooperative microbial community may provide a general mechanism for the evolution of diversity that is involved in providing public goods, such as siderophores for iron scavenging, extracellular enzymes for metabolizable substrate acquisition, quorum sensing autoinducers for population or community adaptivity, extracellular matrix biopolymers for biofilm formation and structure, surfactants for motility on surfaces, and exotoxins for host invasion (668,671,672,(674)(675)(676). The functionality and sustainability of a biofilm microbial community may depend upon the balance between cooperative and competitive interactions (677), likely driven by the coevolution of cooperators and cheaters and maintained by the compositional and metabolic diversity in the microbial system (678).…”

Section: Cheating: It Happens In the Microbial World Toomentioning

confidence: 99%

Microbial Surface Colonization and Biofilm Development in Marine Environments

Dang

Lovell

2016

Microbiol Mol Biol Rev

875

636

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SUMMARYBiotic and abiotic surfaces in marine waters are rapidly colonized by microorganisms. Surface colonization and subsequent biofilm formation and development provide numerous advantages to these organisms and support critical ecological and biogeochemical functions in the changing marine environment. Microbial surface association also contributes to deleterious effects such as biofouling, biocorrosion, and the persistence and transmission of harmful or pathogenic microorganisms and their genetic determinants. The processes and mechanisms of colonization as well as key players among the surface-associated microbiota have been studied for several decades. Accumulating evidence indicates that specific cell-surface, cell-cell, and interpopulation interactions shape the composition, structure, spatiotemporal dynamics, and functions of surface-associated microbial communities. Several key microbial processes and mechanisms, including (i) surface, population, and community sensing and signaling, (ii) intraspecies and interspecies communication and interaction, and (iii) the regulatory balance between cooperation and competition, have been identified as critical for the microbial surface association lifestyle. In this review, recent progress in the study of marine microbial surface colonization and biofilm development is synthesized and discussed. Major gaps in our knowledge remain. We pose questions for targeted investigation of surface-specific community-level microbial features, answers to which would advance our understanding of surface-associated microbial community ecology and the biogeochemical functions of these communities at levels from molecular mechanistic details through systems biological integration.

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Section: Cheating: It Happens In the Microbial World Toomentioning

confidence: 99%

Microbial Surface Colonization and Biofilm Development in Marine Environments

Dang

Lovell

2016

Microbiol Mol Biol Rev

875

636

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“…A particularly promising species with which to conduct such experiments is bacteria, which engage in remarkably varied and sophisticated behaviors (19,(39)(40)(41)(42)(43)(44)(45)(46). Although an individual bacterium is clearly mindless, colonies of bacteria, such as Paenibacillus vortex, have been observed to engage in seemingly intelligent behavior, such as competition, collaborative foraging, and cell-to-cell chemotactic and physical communication (19).…”

Section: Testable Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The origin of risk aversion

Zhang

Brennan

2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

107

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Risk aversion is one of the most basic assumptions of economic behavior, but few studies have addressed the question of where risk preferences come from and why they differ from one individual to the next. Here, we propose an evolutionary explanation for the origin of risk aversion. In the context of a simple binary-choice model, we show that risk aversion emerges by natural selection if reproductive risk is systematic (i.e., correlated across individuals in a given generation). In contrast, risk neutrality emerges if reproductive risk is idiosyncratic (i.e., uncorrelated across each given generation). More generally, our framework implies that the degree of risk aversion is determined by the stochastic nature of reproductive rates, and we show that different statistical properties lead to different utility functions. The simplicity and generality of our model suggest that these implications are primitive and cut across species, physiology, and genetic origins.risk aversion | risk preferences | expected utility theory | risk-sensitive foraging | evolution R isk aversion is one of the most fundamental properties of human behavior. Ever since pioneering work by Bernoulli (1) on gambling and the St. Petersburg Paradox in the 17th century, considerable research has been devoted to understanding human decision-making under uncertainty. Two of the most well-known theories are expected utility theory (2) (an axiomatic formulation of rational behavior under uncertainty) and prospect theory (3) (a behavioral theory of decision-making under uncertainty). Several measures of risk aversion have been developed, including curvature measures of utility functions (4, 5), human subject experiments and surveys (6, 7), portfolio choice for financial investors (8), labor-supply behavior (9), deductible choices in insurance contracts (10,11), contestant behavior on game shows (12), option prices (13), and auction behavior (14).Despite its importance and myriad applications in the past several decades, few economists have addressed the question: where does risk aversion come from? Biologists and ecologists have documented risk aversion in nonhuman animal speciesoften called risk-sensitive foraging behavior-ranging from bacteria to primates (15)(16)(17)(18)(19). Recently, the neural basis of risk aversion has also received much attention, because researchers discovered that the activity of a specific brain region correlates with risktaking and risk-averse behavior (20)(21)(22).Evolutionary principles have been applied by economists to a variety of economic behaviors and concepts, including altruism (23, 24), the rate of time preference (25), and utility functions (26-29) † . In particular, Robson (26) proposes an evolutionary model of risk preferences, in which he assumes an increasing concave relation between an individual's number of offspring and the amount of resources available to that individual, and given this concave "biological production function," Robson (26) shows that expected utility arises from idiosyncratic environme...

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“…The production of a public good by members of a population can be exploited by cheaters that take advantage of the good without incurring costs associated with its production (24). Such populations become unstable when the number of cheaters becomes excessive.…”

Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

Cheating by type 3 secretion system-negative Pseudomonas aeruginosa during pulmonary infection

Czechowska¹,

McKeithen-Mead

Moussawi³

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Significance Bacterial pathogens frequently use type 3 secretion systems (T3SS) to counteract host immune responses to infection. T3SS expression is associated with increased virulence of Pseudomonas aeruginosa in humans and in animal models, but T3SS-negative bacteria often are isolated from acutely and chronically infected patients. We tested whether T3SS-negative bacteria could “cheat” during mixed infections with T3SS-positive bacteria in a murine model of acute pneumonia. Bacterial cheating occurred in the inflamed lung but only when T3SS-positive bacteria secreted the phospholipase A 2 effector, Exotoxin U. Phenotypically T3SS-expressing and –non-expressing bacteria co-exist within P. aeruginosa populations, suggesting that bacterial cheating might allow T3SS-negative organisms to establish themselves within a host.

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Multicellular behavior in bacteria: communication, cooperation, competition and cheating

Cited by 95 publications

References 14 publications

Microbial Surface Colonization and Biofilm Development in Marine Environments

Microbial Surface Colonization and Biofilm Development in Marine Environments

The origin of risk aversion

Cheating by type 3 secretion system-negative Pseudomonas aeruginosa during pulmonary infection

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