title: Metabolic modeling of a mutualistic microbial community.
abstract: The rate of production of methane in many environments depends upon mutualistic interactions between sulfate-reducing bacteria and methanogens. To enhance our understanding of these relationships, we took advantage of the fully sequenced genomes of Desulfovibrio vulgaris and Methanococcus maripaludis to produce and analyze the first multispecies stoichiometric metabolic model. Model results were compared to data on growth of the co-culture on lactate in the absence of sulfate. The model accurately predicted several ecologically relevant characteristics, including the flux of metabolites and the ratio of D. vulgaris to M. maripaludis cells during growth. In addition, the model and our data suggested that it was possible to eliminate formate as an interspecies electron shuttle, but hydrogen transfer was essential for syntrophic growth. Our work demonstrated that reconstructed metabolic networks and stoichiometric models can serve not only to predict metabolic fluxes and growth phenotypes of single organisms, but also to capture growth parameters and community composition of simple bacterial communities.
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA. sstolyar@u.washington.edu
authors.forename: Sergey
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Stolyar
authors.forename: Steve
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Van Dien
authors.forename: Kristina Linnea
authors.initials: KL
authors.lastname: Hillesland
authors.forename: Nicolas
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Pinel
authors.forename: Thomas J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Lie
authors.forename: John A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Leigh
authors.forename: David A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Stahl
mesh_terms: D018920:Coculture Techniques; D016969:Desulfovibrio vulgaris / Q000254:growth & development / Q000378:metabolism*; D004583:Electrons; D006859:Hydrogen / Q000378:metabolism; D017017:Methanococcus / Q000254:growth & development / Q000378:metabolism*; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D013045:Species Specificity; D013431:Sulfates / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D013431:Sulfates; D006859:Hydrogen