Regulation and dysregulation of cell collectives

While we are used to considering cells as independent information-processing units, it is less known how they work as a member of a collective that shares a joint function. Note that this does not necessarily take us to a multi-cellular system where tissues, for instance, would be a simple case of such collective. Indeed, it is increasingly known that many bacterial populations work in combination. This applies to similar strains and, more interestingly, to different species as a consortium. We studied consortia of microbial communities that have a share in a particular public resource.  Maintaining the public resource manifests itself as a problem of cooperation, which we examined with models and, experimentally, with synthetic or artificial communities.  We also studied how ecological and evolutionary feedbacks help support cooperation or how the function of the community arises from high-order interactions of its parts. Note that different classes of competitive interactions play an important role in these and different communities, like those found in stem cell niches.

Some readings.

Tolerance to NADH/NAD+ imbalance anticipates aging and anti-aging interventions. With A.J. Alonso-Lavin and D. Bajic (2019). [HTML].

High-order interactions dominate the functional landscape of microbial consortia. With D. Bajic, M.L. Osborne, A. Sanchez and A. Sanchez-Gorostiaga (2019). [Preprint] and [HTML].

Eco-evolutionary feedbacks can rescue cooperation in microbial populations. With M. Cavaliere, E. Martinez-Garcia, and C. Moreno-Fenoll (2017). [PDF].

Plasticity facilitates sustainable growth in the commons. With M. Cavaliere (2013). [HTML].

Persistent competition among stem cells and their daughters in the Drosophila ovary germline niche. With B. Diaz, I. Fernandez-Ruiz, O. Gerlitz, E. Moreno, M. Portela, and C. Rhiner (2009). [PDF].