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Full-Text Articles in Biodiversity
Social Interactions And Spatial Structure Drive Community Assembly Of Bacterial Biofilm, Matthew C. Bond
Social Interactions And Spatial Structure Drive Community Assembly Of Bacterial Biofilm, Matthew C. Bond
Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations
Despite the critical nature which microbial communities play in the natural world and human civilization, the breadth of understanding remains shallow. Challenged by scale, high variability between environments, and extensive diversity, microbial ecologists strive to understand connections between a community’s structure and function, as well as the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms underlying observed natural patterning of communities. Biofilms are the predominate mode of growth for microbial communities—characterized by cellular attachment to a surface via a self-produced matrix and heterogeneous structure, often resulting in a primary growth front along the biofilm surface due to differential access to bulk nutrients (cite). This …
Causes And Consequences Of Lasr Mutant Selection In Pseudomonas Aeruginosa Populations, Dallas L. Mould
Causes And Consequences Of Lasr Mutant Selection In Pseudomonas Aeruginosa Populations, Dallas L. Mould
Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations
Change is the only constant in life, and these changes, though random in nature, can have consequences. Quorum sensing is heterogeneous in phenotype and prone to negative selection. In P. aeruginosa, the regulator LasR is frequently non-functional in phylogenetically diverse isolates. Through repeated experimental evolution and mathematical modeling, we show that differences in growth enable lasR mutant evolutionary success and this requires a system enabling metabolic choices, known as carbon catabolite repression (or catabolite repression). The differences in catabolite repression between wild type and lasR mutants enable altered metabolite preferences, and the resulting differences in metabolic states enable intraspecies …