title: Construction of bacteria-eukaryote synthetic mutualism.
abstract: Mutualism is ubiquitous in nature but is known to be intrinsically vulnerable with regard to both population dynamics and evolution. Synthetic ecology has indicated that it is feasible for organisms to establish novel mutualism merely through encountering each other by showing that it is feasible to construct synthetic mutualism between organisms. However, bacteria-eukaryote mutualism, which is ecologically important, has not yet been constructed. In this study, we synthetically constructed mutualism between a bacterium and a eukaryote by using two model organisms. We mixed a bacterium, Escherichia coli (a genetically engineered glutamine auxotroph), and an amoeba, Dictyostelium discoideum, in 14 sets of conditions in which each species could not grow in monoculture but potentially could grow in coculture. Under a single condition in which the bacterium and amoeba mutually compensated for the lack of required nutrients (lipoic acid and glutamine, respectively), both species grew continuously through several subcultures, essentially establishing mutualism. Our results shed light on the establishment of bacteria-eukaryote mutualism and indicate that a bacterium and eukaryote pair in nature also has a non-negligible possibility of establishing novel mutualism if the organisms are potentially mutualistic.
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioinformatic Engineering, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Osaka University, 1-5 Yamadaoka, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan.
authors.forename: Isao
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Kubo
authors.forename: Kazufumi
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Hosoda
authors.forename: Shingo
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Suzuki
authors.forename: Kayo
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Yamamoto
authors.forename: Kumiko
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kihara
authors.forename: Kotaro
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Mori
authors.forename: Tetsuya
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Yomo
mesh_terms: D004023:Dictyostelium / Q000254:growth & development*; D004926:Escherichia coli / Q000254:growth & development*; D011157:Population Dynamics; D013559:Symbiosis / Q000502:physiology*; D058615:Synthetic Biology / Q000379:methods*
keywords: Bacteria–eukaryote mutualism; Establishment; Mutualism; Symbiosis; Synthetic ecology; Syntrophism