Cooperation among Microorganisms

Ned S Wingreen,Simon Levin,Simon A Levin

doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0040299

Abstract

Cooperation among Microorganisms

Highlights

One of the organizing principles of life on Earth is that cells cooperate
Most of the best-studied cases of cooperation among microorganisms concern intraspecies cooperation. An example of this is quorum sensing among bacteria, in which cells produce, secrete, and detect small molecules, called autoinducers
Interest in bacterial cooperation has been spurred by the discovery that one of the autoinducers, named AI-2, is produced by a wide variety of bacteria, including most known human pathogens, and it may be one of a class of universal interspecies communication molecules [3,4]

Summary

Introduction

One of the organizing principles of life on Earth is that cells cooperate. This is evident in the case of multicellular organisms, from nematodes to humans, but it appears to apply widely among single-celled organisms such as bacteria, fungi, and amoeba. Another well-studied example of intraspecies cooperation concerns the cyanobacterium Anabaena, which grows in long chains, in which approximately one cell out of ten differentiates into a heterocyst that provides fixed nitrogen for the neighboring cells (Figure 2) [2]. Cooperation between different microorganism species is much less understood, or studied, partially for practical reasons, and because the ubiquity of communication among microorganisms has only recently been appreciated.

Results

Conclusion