Research Projects

Metabolic cross-feeding interactions are crucial for microorganisms to specialize under diverse nutrient conditions, maintaining community dynamics and reducing metabolic burden. Sharing metabolites like sugars, amino acids, nucleotides, and vitamins can promote long-term survival in microbial communities. However, the biochemical factors determining these interactions remain less well studied. Carbon and nitrogen sources are important factors that determine physiological conditions, allowing different cells within a group to specialize. Studies from Sunil Laxman's Lab have shown that yeast cells within a community display division of labor under glucose-limited conditions, revealing differential carbon and nitrogen resource allocation within cells that form communities of yeast. The current understanding of metabolic cross-feeding interactions focuses on understanding the size and composition of microbial niches and community dynamics. However, studying amino acid cross-feeding in natural microbial communities is difficult. To understand rules of amino acid exchange, model synthetic microbial communities can be used. The focus will be on addressing how cells allocate carbon and nitrogen, as interactions change between isogenic communities, and when there are paired exchange-based community level interactions. The study will establish simplified, synthetic yeast communities to systematically identify possible amino acid cross-feedings and study the biochemical mechanisms driving these interactions and exchange. The study will also quantify the extent of these interactions and their impact on community dynamics and survival.