Abstract
ABSTRACTFrom the homeostasis of human health to the cycling of Earth's elements, microbial activities underlie environmental, medical and industrial processes. These activities occur in chemical and physical landscapes that are highly dynamic and experienced by bacteria as fluctuations. In this review, we first discuss how bacteria can experience both spatial and temporal heterogeneity in their environments as temporal fluctuations of various timescales (seconds to seasons) and types (nutrient, sunlight, fluid flow, etc.). We then focus primarily on nutrient fluctuations to discuss how bacterial communities, populations and single cells respond to environmental fluctuations. Overall, we find that environmental fluctuations are ubiquitous and diverse, and strongly shape microbial behavior, ecology and evolution when compared with environments in which conditions remain constant over time. We hope this review may serve as a guide toward understanding the significance of environmental fluctuations in microbial life, such that their contributions and implications can be better assessed and exploited.
Highlights
We focus primarily on nutrient E fluctuations to discuss how bacterial communities, populations and single cells respond to IT environmental fluctuations
We find that environmental fluctuations are ubiquitous, D diverse, and strongly shape microbial behavior, ecology and evolution when compared to E environments in which conditions remain constant over time
The studies reviewed highlight fluctuations as an important characteristic to our understanding of PT microbial life, because microbes in fluctuations can display strikingly different behaviors than RI those responding to single shifts. We illustrate these differences by examining microbial responses to environmental fluctuations at different scales of biological organization: At the SC community level, fluctuations have been theorized to influence species diversity by U fluctuating the availability of different niches faster than species can go extinct; in practice, N some microbial communities fluctuate in composition (Desai et al 2016) and activity A (Marchant et al 2017) with the environment, yet some are surprisingly robust
Summary
Environmental fluctuations and their effects on microbial communities, populations, and individuals. This page was generated automatically upon download from the ETH Zurich Research Collection. For more information please consult the Terms of use
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