Exploring heterogeneous phenotypic states in bacteria.

Abstract

The collective dry biomass of all bacteria on earth is estimated to be in the ballpark of 400 trillion tons. A single human body alone can harbor approximately 100 trillion bacterial cells. We are only just beginning to understand how the goings-on of these creatures affect not only our own health and biology, but the health and biology of every ecosystem on earth. The vast majority of naturally existing bacteria (>99%) have yet to be cultured in a laboratory setting, making studying them using classical microbiology techniques difficult at best. Investigating the complex community structures of these organisms becomes even more difficult still. To work around this problem, we can first construct synthetic microbial consortia that are engineered to exhibit the behaviors we would like to study. Or second, we can develop applications that can measure organism behavior directly in their natural environments, as is being seen the rapid expansion of the –omics technologies. In this exam, we use both approaches to examine how single-cell behaviors, in both isogenic and mixed bacterial communities, affect the phenotypic dynamics of the population as a whole.