Metabolic economics of microbial ecosystems (ME-ME)

One key success of humankind’s evolution is that we can perform specialized functions and trade the products of our labor. Microorganisms have been doing the same way before us: running an economy. The basic logic of microbial economies is also no different than ours: resources are limited, and production of goods costs energy. The winning strategy (maximal output of a product, or a metabolic good) is always the one that has the most efficient resource-cost balance.

Microbiologists frequently try to grow microbes in isolation; however, most microbes engage in economies where they trade products of their metabolism with each other. These interactions between microbes create a situation where “1 + 1 = 3”. For instance, certain gut microbiomes can break orally taken drugs down into inactive molecules which microbes in isolation could not do. Yet we still cannot predict and construct a microbiome with certain traits from isolated microbes: known “rules” for predicting community composition come from mixing different microbes in a test tube, however interactions are so complex they usually cannot be fully translated into novel communities. This is a big loss for biotechnological and biomedical applications, where isolated microorganisms with limited capabilities are usually used.

Economic reasoning has inspired so-called growth laws for single microbes. My research into metabolic economics of microbial ecosystems (ME-ME) will aim to codify the logic of microbial metabolic interactions into a set of economic rules to help understand and predict microbial interactions. I hope this research will yield more efficient and sustainable (bio-)technological production platforms made of rationally designed microbial economies, ultimately contributing to new solutions for urgent global problems such as ensuring food-and-feed security or preserving threatened natural ecosystems.