István Scheuring

Eötvös University and HAS, Theoretical Biology and Evolutionary Ecology Research Group Budapest, Hungary


Host directed interference competition of microbes - Scheuring, I., Boza, G, Yu, D. W

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There is great interest in explaining how beneficial microbiomes are assembled. Antibiotic-producing microbiomes are arguably the most abundant class of beneficial microbiome in nature, having been found on corals, arthropods, molluscs, vertebrates and plant rhizospheres. We studied models by showing that when hosts fuel interference competition by providing abundant resources, the interference competition favours the recruitment of antibiotic-producing (and-resistant) bacteria. Further, we studied the effect of diffusion speed of antibiotic and the mechanism of resistance on the success of antibiotic-producing bacteria. We pointed out that this partner-choice mechanism is more effective when at least one antibiotic producer symbiont strain with efflux-type resistance is vertically transmitted or has a high immigration rate and when diffusion speed of antibiotic is moderate.

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