Interbacterial interaction within microbial communities

Bacteria colonize every habitat on earth and impact environmental ecosystems in diverse ways from preventing diseases on plant roots to altering nutrient uptake rate in the human gut. The influences are dependent on interactions of multiple bacterial species within the communities. Bacterial interactions, cooperative or competitive, lead to the evolution of a diverse array of pathways. A detailed understanding of the molecular mechanisms of bacterial interactions provides avenues to predict and manipulate microbial populations, which will have applications in both the environment (e.g. bioremediation) and human health (e.g. dysbiosis in the human gut) contexts. However, such knowledge is lacking in most systems. We are interested in studying the underlying mechanisms that allow individual species of bacteria to survive and thrive in multi-species environments.

Ting, See-Yeun