Abstract
Background
Synthetic microbial consortia are conglomerations of genetically engineered microbes programmed to cooperatively bring about population-level phenotypes. By coordinating their activity, the constituent strains can display emergent behaviors that are difficult to engineer into isogenic populations. To do so, strains are engineered to communicate with one another through intercellular signaling pathways that depend on cell density.
Methods
Here, we used computational modeling to examine how the behavior of synthetic microbial consortia results from the interplay between population dynamics governed by cell growth and internal transcriptional dynamics governed by cell-cell signaling. Specifically, we examined a synthetic microbial consortium in which two strains each produce signals that down-regulate transcription in the other. Within a single strain this regulatory topology is called a “co-repressive toggle switch” and can lead to bistability.
Results
We found that in co-repressive synthetic microbial consortia the existence and stability of different states depend on population-level dynamics. As the two strains passively compete for space within the colony, their relative fractions fluctuate and thus alter the strengths of intercellular signals. These fluctuations drive the consortium to alternative equilibria. Additionally, if the growth rates of the strains depend on their transcriptional states, an additional feedback loop is created that can generate oscillations.
Conclusions
Our findings demonstrate that the dynamics of microbial consortia cannot be predicted from their regulatory topologies alone, but are also determined by interactions between the strains. Therefore, when designing synthetic microbial consortia that use intercellular signaling, one must account for growth variations caused by the production of protein.
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Acknowledgements
This work was funded by the National Institutes of Health, through the joint NSF/NIGMS grant R01GM104974 (MRB, KJ), the National Science Foundation grant DMS-1122094 (KJ), the Robert A. Welch Foundation grant C-1729 (MRB), and the National Science Foundation grant 1300319 (GO).
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This article is dedicated to the Special Collection of Synthetic Biology, Aiming for Quantitative Control of Cellular Systems (Eds. Cheemeng Tan and Haiyan Liu).
These authors contributed equally to this work.
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Sadeghpour, M., Veliz-Cuba, A., Orosz, G. et al. Bistability and oscillations in co-repressive synthetic microbial consortia. Quant Biol 5, 55–66 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40484-017-0100-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40484-017-0100-y