Open AccessStabilizing microbial communities by looped mass transfer
Author(s) -
Shuang Li,
Nafi’u Abdulkadir,
Florian Schattenberg,
Ulisses Nunes da Rocha,
Volker Grimm,
Susann Müller,
Zishu Liu
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
proceedings of the national academy of sciences of the united states of america
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 5.011
H-Index - 771
eISSN - 1091-6490
pISSN - 0027-8424
DOI - 10.1073/pnas.2117814119
Subject(s) - microbiome , biology , mass cytometry , evolutionary biology , mass transfer , computational biology , genetics , chemistry , gene , chromatography , phenotype
Significance The population ecology of microbial communities is still poorly understood and their notorious instability makes them impossible to control. Much of the instability is caused by the stochastic assembly of microorganisms, especially in highly diverse microbiomes where structural and hence functional changes occur rapidly due to the short generation time of their members. Usually, to maintain organismic proportions in communities, their niches are deterministically reinforced, but stochasticity strongly counteracts this. Based on metacommunity theory, a looped mass transfer was developed that uses the rescue effect to stabilize communities. This study fills a long-standing gap and enables continuous and proportionally equal growth of community members using an unprecedented operational design that addresses an acute need in the healthcare and biotechnology industries.