Open AccessEstimating maximal microbial growth rates from cultures, metagenomes, and single cells via codon usage patterns
Author(s) -
Jake L. Weissman,
Shengwei Hou,
Jed A. Fuhrman
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
proceedings of the national academy of sciences of the united states of america
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1091-6490
pISSN - 0027-8424
DOI - 10.1073/pnas.2016810118
Subject(s) - biology , metagenomics , growth rate , bacterial growth , exponential growth , genome , bacterial genome size , estimator , organism , bacteria , evolutionary biology , genetics , gene , statistics , mathematical analysis , geometry , mathematics
Significance Despite the wide perception that microbes have rapid growth rates, many environments like seawater and soil are often dominated by microorganisms that can only grow very slowly. Our knowledge about growth is necessarily biased toward easily culturable organisms, which tend to be those that grow fast, because microbial growth rates have traditionally been measured using laboratory growth experiments. However, how are potential growth rates distributed in nature? Using genomic data, we predicted the growth rates of over 200,000 organisms, including many as yet uncultivated species. These data reveal how current culture collections are strongly biased toward fast-growing organisms. Finally, we noticed a bimodal distribution of maximal growth rates, suggesting a natural division of microbial growth strategies into two classes.