Authors: Jiqi Shao, Nan Rong, Zhenchao Wu, Shaohua Gu, Beibei Liu, Ning Shen, Zhiyuan Li.
Journal: iScience
DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.107396
Link: https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(23)01473-6
Published: July 19, 2023
Document Type: Article
Highlights:
Siderophore-mediated iron partition allows for the cooperator–cheater coexistence
The resource partition mechanism bypasses competitive exclusion
Chemical innovation leads to different stability criteria than classical models
Summary:
Microbes shape their habitats by consuming resources and producing a diverse array of chemicals that can serve as public goods. Despite the risk of exploitation by cheaters, genes encoding sharable molecules like siderophores are widely found in nature, prompting investigations into the mechanisms that allow producers to resist invasion by cheaters. In this work, we presented the chemostat-typed “resource partition model” to demonstrate that dividing the iron resource between private and public siderophores can promote stable or dynamic coexistence between producers and cheaters in a well-mixed environment. Moreover, our analysis shows that when microbes not only consume but also produce resources, chemical innovation leads to stability criteria that differ from those of classical consumer resource models, resulting in more complex dynamics. Our work sheds light on the role of chemical innovations in microbial communities and the potential for resource partition to facilitate dynamical coexistence between cooperative and cheating organisms.