In microbial communications, the belief that there was competition was widely accepted; but a recent study has revealed that bacterial species help each other more often than previously thought.
In a study led by Paul C. Blainey of Harvard at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Broad MIT, and Jonathan Friedman of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, more than 35% of matches between bacterial species helped to grow at least one of the two species. The authors of the study; He is of the opinion that the data obtained can be used to guide improvements in bacterial growth through matching compatible species.
It has been observed that the effect of cultivation conditions on the interaction between species is great.
In the research where 20 soil bacteria species growing in 40 nutrient conditions, which differ in terms of carbon content and type, were tested; To understand how bacterial species affect each other’s growth, pairs of species, one fluorescently labeled and the other unlabeled, were generated. Using fluorescence measurements to observe the growth of tagged species with and without pairs, the researchers changed which species was tagged and repeated each pairing twice, measuring more than 180,000 interactions. If a mating caused either species to grow faster than alone, the researchers rated this result as a positive interaction, even if the augmented species slowed the growth of the mate. It has been observed that in such situations of ‘interference’ the weaker side is often exploited at the expense of the stronger.
The researchers concluded that the relationship between any pair of species is strongly related to rearing conditions. Many of the species pairs showed different types of interactions depending on the carbon source. “You change the environment and the interaction can change not only quantitatively but also qualitatively,” Friedman said, noting that it’s often wrong to predict what will happen in one environment based on what’s going on in the other. In addition, Friedman; He noted that the research findings could be used in synthetic ecology or engineering, as stimulating the growth of one microbe can lead to another microbe that grows well in that environment.
Sara Mitri, who studies microbial ecology at the University of Lausanne, said the study is extremely important, saying the extent of beneficial interactions between bacteria is a “longstanding” question that is “hard to test on such a large scale.” The findings are also in Mitri’s lab. It also overlaps with the findings that he has observed with similar species. Researchers who believe that these beneficial interactions between bacteria may play an important role in shaping microbial ecosystems, do not yet know what triggers different bacterial interactions. Blainey stated that they hope their work will excite other researchers. “I hope that researchers specializing in the metabolism of some of the carbon sources will undertake some of this detailed mechanistic work.”
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