Non-additive microbial community responses to environmental complexity

Pacheco, Alan R.; Osborne, Melisa L.; Segrè, Daniel

doi:10.1038/s41467-021-22426-3

Non-additive microbial community responses to environmental complexity

Journal Article · Thu Apr 22 00:00:00 EDT 2021 · Nature Communications

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22426-3· OSTI ID:1812365

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Boston Univ., MA (United States); Boston Univ., MA (United States). Biological Design Center

Environmental composition is a major, though poorly understood, determinant of microbiome dynamics. Here we ask whether general principles govern how microbial community growth yield and diversity scale with an increasing number of environmental molecules. By assembling hundreds of synthetic consortia in vitro, we find that growth yield can remain constant or increase in a non-additive manner with environmental complexity. Conversely, taxonomic diversity is often much lower than expected. To better understand these deviations, we formulate metrics for epistatic interactions between environments and use them to compare our results to communities simulated with experimentally-parametrized consumer resource models. We find that key metabolic and ecological factors, including species similarity, degree of specialization, and metabolic interactions, modulate the observed non-additivity and govern the response of communities to combinations of resource pools. Our results demonstrate that environmental complexity alone is not sufficient for maintaining community diversity, and provide practical guidance for designing and controlling microbial ecosystems.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER); National Institutes of Health (NIH); National Science Foundation (NSF)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-05CH11231

OSTI ID:: 1812365

Journal Information:: Nature Communications, Journal Name: Nature Communications Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 12; ISSN 2041-1723

Publisher:: Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Non-additive microbial community responses to environmental complexity

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