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SUMMARY:Plenary Lecture 8: An Economic Framework of Microbial Trade - Taso
 ff\, J (Claremont Graduate University)
DTSTART:20141030T163000Z
DTEND:20141030T170500Z
UID:TALK55809@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Mustapha Amrani
DESCRIPTION:A large fraction of microbial life on earth exists in complex 
 communities where metabolic exchange is vital. Microbes trade essential re
 sources to promote their own growth in an analogous way to countries that 
 exchange goods in modern economic markets. Inspired by these similarities\
 , we developed a framework based on general equilibrium theory (GET) from 
 economics to predict the population dynamics of trading microbial communit
 ies. Our biotic GET (BGET) model provides an a priori theory of the growth
  benefits of microbial trade\, yielding several novel insights relevant to
  understanding microbial ecology and engineering synthetic communities. We
  find that the economic concept of comparative advantage is a crucial cond
 ition for mutualistic trade. Our model suggests that microbial communities
  can grow faster when species are unable to produce essential resources th
 at are obtained through trade\, thereby promoting metabolic specialization
  and increased intercellular interactions.  Furthermore\, we find that spe
 cies engaged in trade exhibit a fundamental tradeoff between growth rate a
 nd relative population abundance\, and that different environments may pro
 mote varying strategies along this growth-abundance spectrum. We experimen
 tally tested this tradeoff using a synthetic consortium of Escherichia col
 i cells and found the results to match the predictions of the model. This 
 quantitative framework provides a foundation to study natural and engineer
 ed microbial communities through a new lens based on economic theories dev
 eloped over the past century.\n
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Newton Institute
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