title: Theory of cooperation in a micro-organismal snowdrift game.
abstract: We present a mean-field model for the phase diagram of a community of micro-organisms, interacting through their metabolism so that they are, in effect, engaging in a cooperative social game. We show that as a function of the concentration of the nutrients glucose and histidine, the community undergoes a phase transition separating a state in which one strain is dominant to a state which is characterized by coexisting populations. Our results are in good agreement with recent experimental results, correctly reproducing quantitative trends and predicting the phase diagram.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Center for the Physics of Living Cells and Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Loomis Laboratory of Physics, 1110 West Green Street, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA.
authors.forename: Zhenyu
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Nigel
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Goldenfeld
mesh_terms: D005716:Game Theory; D005947:Glucose / Q000378:metabolism; D006639:Histidine / Q000378:metabolism; D056265:Microbial Interactions; D008829:Microbiology; D008954:Models, Biological; D017711:Nonlinear Dynamics
chemical_list: D006639:Histidine; D005947:Glucose