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Closed microbial communities self-organize to persistently cycle carbon

Luis Miguel de Jesús Astacio, Kaumudi H. Prabhakara, Zeqian Li, Harry Mickalide, Seppe Kuehn
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.28.121848
Luis Miguel de Jesús Astacio
1Center for the Physics of Living Cells, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801
2Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Urbana, IL 61801
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Kaumudi H. Prabhakara
1Center for the Physics of Living Cells, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801
2Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Urbana, IL 61801
3Center for the Physics of Evolving Systems. University of Chicago. Chicago, IL 60637
4Department of Ecology and Evolution. University of Chicago. Chicago, IL 60637
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Zeqian Li
1Center for the Physics of Living Cells, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801
2Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Urbana, IL 61801
3Center for the Physics of Evolving Systems. University of Chicago. Chicago, IL 60637
4Department of Ecology and Evolution. University of Chicago. Chicago, IL 60637
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Harry Mickalide
1Center for the Physics of Living Cells, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801
2Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Urbana, IL 61801
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Seppe Kuehn
1Center for the Physics of Living Cells, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801
2Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Urbana, IL 61801
3Center for the Physics of Evolving Systems. University of Chicago. Chicago, IL 60637
4Department of Ecology and Evolution. University of Chicago. Chicago, IL 60637
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  • For correspondence: seppe.kuehn@gmail.com
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Abstract

Nutrient cycling is an emergent property of ecosystems at all scales, from microbial communities to the entire biosphere. Understanding how nutrient cycles emerge from the collective metabolism of ecosystems is a challenging problem. Here we use closed microbial ecosystems (CES), hermetically sealed consortia that sustain nutrient cycles when provided with only light, to learn how microbial communities cycle carbon. A new technique for quantifying carbon exchange shows that CES comprised of an alga and diverse bacteria self-organize to robustly cycle carbon. Comparing a library of CES, we find that carbon cycling does not depend strongly on the taxonomy of the bacteria present. Metabolic profiling reveals functional redundancy across CES: despite strong taxonomic differences, self-organized CES exhibit a conserved set of metabolic capabilities.

Summary Closed microbial communities of algae and bacteria self-organize to robustly cycle carbon via emergent metabolite exchange.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted May 30, 2020.
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Closed microbial communities self-organize to persistently cycle carbon
Luis Miguel de Jesús Astacio, Kaumudi H. Prabhakara, Zeqian Li, Harry Mickalide, Seppe Kuehn
bioRxiv 2020.05.28.121848; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.28.121848
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Closed microbial communities self-organize to persistently cycle carbon
Luis Miguel de Jesús Astacio, Kaumudi H. Prabhakara, Zeqian Li, Harry Mickalide, Seppe Kuehn
bioRxiv 2020.05.28.121848; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.28.121848

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