In a study published in Nature Communications, Dr. Yonatan Friedman and PhD student Nitai Maroz from the Faculty of Food and Environmental Agriculture at the Hebrew University bring science closer to engineering a unique microbiome for specific needs in humans, animals, plants and the environment
Every organism on earth, animal, plant or environment, is home to complex bacterial communities, known as the microbiome. These bacterial communities have a decisive effect on the health of their hosts, and on the functioning of global ecosystems because they are involved in a wide variety of important processes, such as soil fertilization and the breakdown of food in the digestive system of humans and animals. Therefore, in recent years, many efforts have been invested in engineering synthetic bacterial societies, which are not organically formed, with a bacterial composition selected in order to perform beneficial actions such as neutralizing environmental pollutants, breaking down waste, and inhibiting pathogens.
The rapid evolution of bacteria
Despite the carefully selected composition of the microbiome, bacteria undergo rapid evolution that can significantly alter the societies they designed and impair their intended activity. Although the importance of evolutionary processes of bacterial societies to their composition is known, the field is almost unexplored. Therefore, although it is known that the evolution of the bacteria has an effect, it is not yet clear how and how much the change to the function of the microbiome is significant and whether it is predictable. Dr. Yonatan Friedman together with PhD student Nitai Meroz from the Department of Plant Diseases and Microbiology in the Faculty of Food and Environmental Agriculture at the Hebrew University, examined in a new study published in the journal Nature Communications whether the evolutionary changes of bacterial societies are far-reaching and how far these changes can be predicted in about 400 generations of germs.
The research was conducted through experimental evolution, in which bacteria are taken and grown generations upon generations under controlled laboratory conditions and learn how they change over time. "For the most part, such experiments are done with one species of bacteria, in isolation from other species that can influence its evolution," says Dr. Friedman. "In our research, we performed evolution experiments on societies that consist of several species, and not on one species in isolation. In order to understand how general the formations are, and not specific to a particular company, we performed identical experiments on dozens of different bacterial companies." Each society evolved for about three months, which for the bacteria represents about 400 generations.
The researchers showed that the species composition of a bacterial society usually changes significantly due to evolution in less than three months, a fact that should be taken into account when designing bacterial societies for biotechnological needs. However, the changes that occurred were repeated in different test cases and happened every time the same species evolved together. In addition, the researchers showed that changes that occur in simple societies that contain pairs of species can predict the changes that occur in more complex societies that include the same species.
The research was done with funding from the National Science Foundation (ISF).
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