Abstract
ABSTRACTThe spatial organization of microbial communities arises from a complex interplay of biotic and abiotic interactions, and is a major determinant of ecosystem functions. Here we design a microfluidic platform to investigate how the spatial arrangement of microbes impacts gene expression and growth. We elucidate key biochemical parameters that dictate the mapping between spatial positioning and gene expression patterns. We show that distance can establish a low-pass filter to periodic inputs and can enhance the fidelity of information processing. Positive and negative feedback can play disparate roles in the synchronization and robustness of a genetic oscillator distributed between two strains to spatial separation. Quantification of growth and metabolite release in an amino-acid auxotroph community demonstrates that the interaction network and stability of the community are highly sensitive to temporal perturbations and spatial arrangements. In sum, our microfluidic platform can quantify spatiotemporal parameters influencing diffusion-mediated interactions in microbial consortia.
Highlights
The spatial organization of microbial communities arises from a complex interplay of biotic and abiotic interactions, and is a major determinant of ecosystem functions
We demonstrate that spatial separation can enhance the fidelity of information transmission and biomolecular feedback loops can critically shape the stability of the oscillator to variations in spatial positioning
We investigated the impact of spatial separation on the dynamics of signal communication mediated by quorum-sensing between engineered Escherichia coli populations
Summary
The spatial organization of microbial communities arises from a complex interplay of biotic and abiotic interactions, and is a major determinant of ecosystem functions. Quantification of growth and metabolite release in an amino-acid auxotroph community demonstrates that the interaction network and stability of the community are highly sensitive to temporal perturbations and spatial arrangements. The spatial structure of microbial communities has been shown to influence ecological stability, functional activities, and responses to environmental perturbations[5,6,7,8,9]. We develop a microfluidic platform, MISTiC (Mapping Interactions across Space and Time in Communities), to deepen our understanding of the effects of defined spatial structure and temporally changing environmental signals on microbial community properties. We use MISTiC to quantify the role of defined spatial structure and fluctuating environmental signals on information transmission and the temporal robustness of a distributed gene circuit oscillator in synthetic microbial consortia. The inferred interaction networks in different environmental contexts within MISTiC coupled to measurements of amino acid release highlight key parameters that determine the stability of the consortium
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