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Cooperation and Hamilton's rule in a simple synthetic microbial system
A fundamental problem in biology is understanding the evolutionary emergence and maintenance of altruistic behaviors. A well-recognized conceptual insight is provided by a general mathematical relation, Hamilton's rule. This rule can in principle be invoked to explain natural examples of cooper...
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Formato: | Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Nature Publishing Group
2010
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2950083/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20706208 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/msb.2010.57 |
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author | Chuang, John S Rivoire, Olivier Leibler, Stanislas |
author_facet | Chuang, John S Rivoire, Olivier Leibler, Stanislas |
author_sort | Chuang, John S |
collection | PubMed |
description | A fundamental problem in biology is understanding the evolutionary emergence and maintenance of altruistic behaviors. A well-recognized conceptual insight is provided by a general mathematical relation, Hamilton's rule. This rule can in principle be invoked to explain natural examples of cooperation, but measuring the variables that it involves is a particularly challenging problem and controlling these variables experimentally an even more daunting task. Here, we overcome these difficulties by using a simple synthetic microbial system of producers and nonproducers of an extracellular growth-enhancing molecule, which acts as a ‘common good.' For this system, we are able to manipulate the intrinsic growth difference between producers and nonproducers, as well as the impact of the common good on the growth rate of its recipients. Our synthetic system is thus uniquely suited for studying the relation between the parameters entering Hamilton's rule and the quantities governing the systems' behavior. The experimental results highlight a crucial effect of nonlinearities in the response to the common good, which in general tend to limit the predictive value of Hamilton's rule. |
format | Text |
id | pubmed-2950083 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2010 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-29500832010-10-05 Cooperation and Hamilton's rule in a simple synthetic microbial system Chuang, John S Rivoire, Olivier Leibler, Stanislas Mol Syst Biol Report A fundamental problem in biology is understanding the evolutionary emergence and maintenance of altruistic behaviors. A well-recognized conceptual insight is provided by a general mathematical relation, Hamilton's rule. This rule can in principle be invoked to explain natural examples of cooperation, but measuring the variables that it involves is a particularly challenging problem and controlling these variables experimentally an even more daunting task. Here, we overcome these difficulties by using a simple synthetic microbial system of producers and nonproducers of an extracellular growth-enhancing molecule, which acts as a ‘common good.' For this system, we are able to manipulate the intrinsic growth difference between producers and nonproducers, as well as the impact of the common good on the growth rate of its recipients. Our synthetic system is thus uniquely suited for studying the relation between the parameters entering Hamilton's rule and the quantities governing the systems' behavior. The experimental results highlight a crucial effect of nonlinearities in the response to the common good, which in general tend to limit the predictive value of Hamilton's rule. Nature Publishing Group 2010-08-10 /pmc/articles/PMC2950083/ /pubmed/20706208 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/msb.2010.57 Text en Copyright © 2010, EMBO and Macmillan Publishers Limited http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike 3.0 Unported License, which allows readers to alter, transform, or build upon the article and then distribute the resulting work under the same or similar license to this one. The work must be attributed back to the original author and commercial use is not permitted without specific permission. |
spellingShingle | Report Chuang, John S Rivoire, Olivier Leibler, Stanislas Cooperation and Hamilton's rule in a simple synthetic microbial system |
title | Cooperation and Hamilton's rule in a simple synthetic microbial system |
title_full | Cooperation and Hamilton's rule in a simple synthetic microbial system |
title_fullStr | Cooperation and Hamilton's rule in a simple synthetic microbial system |
title_full_unstemmed | Cooperation and Hamilton's rule in a simple synthetic microbial system |
title_short | Cooperation and Hamilton's rule in a simple synthetic microbial system |
title_sort | cooperation and hamilton's rule in a simple synthetic microbial system |
topic | Report |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2950083/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20706208 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/msb.2010.57 |
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