Browse by author
Lookup NU author(s): Dr Matthew WadeORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Microbial communities are complex dynamical systems harbouring many species interacting together to implement higher-level functions. Among these higher-level functions, conversion of organic matter into simpler building blocks by microbial communities underpins biogeochemical cycles and animal and plant nutrition, and is exploited in biotechnology. A prerequisite to predicting the dynamics and stability of community-mediated metabolic conversions is the development and calibration of appropriate mathematical models. Here, we present a generic, extendable thermodynamic model for community dynamics and calibrate a key parameter of this thermodynamic model, the minimum energy requirement associated with growth-supporting metabolic pathways, using experimental population dynamics data from synthetic communities composed of a sulfate reducer and two methanogens. Our findings show that accounting for thermodynamics is necessary in capturing the experimental population dynamics of these synthetic communities that feature relevant species using low energy growth pathways. Furthermore, they provide the first estimates for minimum energy requirements of methanogenesis (in the range of −30 kJ mol−1) and elaborate on previous estimates of lactate fermentation by sulfate reducers (in the range of −30 to −17 kJ mol−1 depending on the culture conditions). The open-source nature of the developed model and demonstration of its use for estimating a key thermodynamic parameter should facilitate further thermodynamic modelling of microbial communities.
Author(s): Delattre H, Chen J, Wade MJ, Soyer OS
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Journal of the Royal Society Interface
Year: 2020
Volume: 17
Issue: 166
Pages: 20200053
Print publication date: 27/05/2020
Online publication date: 06/05/2020
Acceptance date: 21/04/2020
Date deposited: 06/05/2020
ISSN (print): 1742-5689
ISSN (electronic): 1742-5662
Publisher: Royal Society
URL: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2020.0053
DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2020.0053
Altmetrics provided by Altmetric
