TY - JOUR
T1 - Conceptualizing microbe–plasmid communities as complex adaptive systems
AU - Pilosof, Shai
N1 - Funding Information:
I thank Professor David Alonso, Professor Mercedes Pascual, Professor Manlio de Domenico and Jenny Racah for their helpful discussions. Dr James Hall and Professor Alvaro San-Millan provided insightful comments on the manuscript. Further comments from students and postdocs at the department of Life Sciences, Ben-Gurion University, improved the manuscript’s clarity. Our lab is supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grant number 1281/20 ) and the Human Frontiers Science Program (award number RGY0064/2022 ).
Funding Information:
I thank Professor David Alonso, Professor Mercedes Pascual, Professor Manlio de Domenico and Jenny Racah for their helpful discussions. Dr James Hall and Professor Alvaro San-Millan provided insightful comments on the manuscript. Further comments from students and postdocs at the department of Life Sciences, Ben-Gurion University, improved the manuscript's clarity. Our lab is supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grant number 1281/20) and the Human Frontiers Science Program (award number RGY0064/2022). There are no interests to declare.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2023/1/1
Y1 - 2023/1/1
N2 - Plasmids shape microbial communities’ diversity, structure, and function. Nevertheless, we lack a mechanistic understanding of how community structure and dynamics emerge from local microbe–plasmid interactions and coevolution. Addressing this gap is challenging because multiple processes operate simultaneously at multiple levels of organization. For example, immunity operates between a plasmid and a cell, but incompatibility mechanisms regulate coexistence between plasmids. Conceptualizing microbe–plasmid communities as complex adaptive systems is a promising approach to overcoming these challenges. I illustrate how agent-based evolutionary modeling, extended by network analysis, can be used to quantify the relative importance of local processes governing community dynamics. These theoretical developments can advance our understanding of plasmid ecology and evolution, especially when combined with empirical data.
AB - Plasmids shape microbial communities’ diversity, structure, and function. Nevertheless, we lack a mechanistic understanding of how community structure and dynamics emerge from local microbe–plasmid interactions and coevolution. Addressing this gap is challenging because multiple processes operate simultaneously at multiple levels of organization. For example, immunity operates between a plasmid and a cell, but incompatibility mechanisms regulate coexistence between plasmids. Conceptualizing microbe–plasmid communities as complex adaptive systems is a promising approach to overcoming these challenges. I illustrate how agent-based evolutionary modeling, extended by network analysis, can be used to quantify the relative importance of local processes governing community dynamics. These theoretical developments can advance our understanding of plasmid ecology and evolution, especially when combined with empirical data.
KW - agent-based models
KW - community dynamics
KW - ecological networks
KW - microbial ecology
KW - mobile genetic elements
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85148721614&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.tim.2023.01.007
DO - 10.1016/j.tim.2023.01.007
M3 - Review article
C2 - 36822952
AN - SCOPUS:85148721614
SN - 0966-842X
JO - Trends in Microbiology
JF - Trends in Microbiology
ER -
