Anomalous spatial redistribution of competing bacteria under starvation conditions.

ABSTRACT: Bacterial cells evolved under prolonged stress often have a growth advantage in stationary phase (GASP); we expect GASP cells to maintain a proliferative state and dominate wild-type cells during starvation, especially when nutrients are limited and the medium has been conditioned. However, when we compete GASP mutants against wild-type cells in a chain of microfluidic microhabitat patches (MHPs) with alternating nutrient-rich and nutrient-limited regions, we observe the reverse effect: wild-type cells achieve maximum relative density under nutrient-limited conditions, while GASP cells dominate nutrient-rich regions. We explain this surprising observation in terms of ideal free distributions, where we show that wild-type cells maximize their fitness at high cell density by redistributing t

SUBMITTER: Lambert G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3133049 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature