Bacteria ‘Invest’ Their Resources To Seek Evolutionary Success
August 2, 2013 Leave a comment
Bacteria ‘Invest’ Their Resources To Seek Evolutionary Success
August 2, 2013
Researchers have recreated and analyzed the complex interplay between bacterial investment strategies and their outcomes for the first time. Asian Scientist (Aug. 2, 2013) – The complex interplay between bacterial investment strategies and their outcomes has been recreated and analyzed for the first time by researchers in Australia and the UK. Since the 1960s, theories have been floated on how decision-making by organisms is related to their survival on one hand or to rapid growth on the other. It is not possible to do both simultaneously because of insufficient resources. Bacteria, like humans, have limited resources and are constantly faced with decisions on how to invest in their future. In their study, published in Ecology Letters, the researchers developed a mathematical model to predict the best way for bacteria to invest resources in a trade-off between growth and stress resistance. The researchers modeled how, like humans investing in cash, bacteria trade in costly proteins to reduce their stress levels or to increase consumption and so grow faster. Evolution can be seen as a decision making process where different choices are encoded in the genes. Each bacterium makes an investment decision; the bad investors fall by the wayside, the good ones survive.“The breakthrough was in using synthetic biology to create identical bacteria but with fixed investment strategies, some investing in growth, some in stress resistance and others in both to various degrees,” said Dr Tom Ferenci, a co-author of the study.
“This is the cleanest system yet that precisely defines a relationship between traded objects in a living ‘market’ and permits the testing of strategies in many different environments.”
Using synthetic biology coupled with mathematical models, the researchers were able to prove the theory that the decision-making process involves trade-offs that give biological investors different niches to exploit.
“With our engineered organisms it has been possible to subject them to a range of different environments with different stresses and growth conditions. We could precisely define, for the first time, the exact nature of bacterial trade-offs,” said Dr Ferenci.
“Of course the precise control of trade-off properties now possible with bacteria is not feasible with other complex trade-offs such as in economics and national economies.”
“Nevertheless, the information this model gives us about trade-offs and their subtleties will certainly be relevant to researchers in economics, finance and business strategy.”
The article can be found at: Maharjan et al. (2013) The Form Of A Trade-Off Determines The Response To Competition.
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