title: An age-dependent model to analyse the evolutionary stability of bacterial quorum sensing.
abstract: Bacterial communication is enabled through the collective release and sensing of signalling molecules in a process called quorum sensing. Cooperative processes can easily be destabilized by the appearance of cheaters, who contribute little or nothing at all to the production of common goods. This especially applies for planktonic cultures. In this study, we analyse the dynamics of bacterial quorum sensing and its evolutionary stability under two levels of cooperation, namely signal and enzyme production. The model accounts for mutation rates and switches between planktonic and biofilm state of growth. We present a mathematical approach to model these dynamics using age-dependent colony models. We explore the conditions under which cooperation is stable and find that spatial structuring can lead to long-term scenarios such as coexistence or bistability, depending on the non-linear combination of different parameters like death rates and production costs.
authors.affiliation: Zentrum Mathematik, Technische Universität München, Boltzmannstr. 3, 85748 Garching, Germany. Electronic address: mund@ma.tum.de.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mund
authors.affiliation: Zentrum Mathematik, Technische Universität München, Boltzmannstr. 3, 85748 Garching, Germany.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kuttler
authors.affiliation: Zentrum Mathematik, Technische Universität München, Boltzmannstr. 3, 85748 Garching, Germany; Institute of Computational Biology, Helmholtz Zentrum München, Ingolstädter Landstr. 1, 85764 Neuherberg, Germany.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Pérez-Velázquez
authors.affiliation: Institute of Computational Biology, Helmholtz Zentrum München, Ingolstädter Landstr. 1, 85764 Neuherberg, Germany.
authors.forename: B A
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Hense
mesh_terms: D005075:Biological Evolution; D050296:Microbial Viability; D008954:Models, Biological; D009154:Mutation / Q000235:genetics; D053038:Quorum Sensing / Q000502:physiology*; D013997:Time Factors
keywords: Age-dependent models; Cooperation; Evolutionary stability; Lifestyle switch; Quorum sensing