Mai, Thu Si Nguyen (2021) Impact of metabolic plasticity on microbial community diversity and stability. Master's Research Project 1, Ecology and Evolution.
|
Text
mEE_2021_ThuSiNguyenMai.pdf Download (8MB) | Preview |
|
![[img]](https://fse.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/style/images/fileicons/text.png) |
Text
Toestemming.pdf Restricted to Registered users only Download (128kB) |
Abstract
Although adaptive metabolic plasticity is ubiquitous in microorganisms, its impact on the ecological properties of microbial communities remains elusive and understudied. Here, by utilizing metabolic networks reconstructed from the genomes of 18 human gut bacteria species and the dynamic flux balance analysis (dFBA), we modelled plastic metabolism in the studied bacteria and investigated its effect at both single species and community level. We showed that species could exploit plasticity for its growth, and this capability, measured as intrinsic plasticity, was determined both by the metabolic network of the species and its environmental condition. For small communities of two species, our simulations revealed that plasticity could foster competitive exclusion when the interacting species differed strongly in intrinsic plasticity. Plasticity could also either hamper or facilitate competitive interactions. Importantly, we demonstrated that when there was plasticity, interaction coefficients inferred by fitting the generalized Lotka‑Volterra (gLV) model to species densities data were incapable of reflecting species interactions at equilibrium. When the species were plastic, even if the inferred interaction coefficients were non‑zero, most of the studied communities were likely to have little to no dependence between their members at equilibrium. These results also suggest that plasticity could promote community stability by weakening ecological interactions.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Master's Research Project 1) |
|---|---|
| Supervisor name: | Doorn, G.S. van |
| Degree programme: | Ecology and Evolution |
| Thesis type: | Master's Research Project 1 |
| Language: | English |
| Date Deposited: | 29 Jul 2021 07:53 |
| Last Modified: | 29 Jul 2021 07:53 |
| URI: | https://fse.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/25492 |
Actions (login required)
 |
View Item |