Intra And Inter Species Interactions In Microbial Communities

Recent developments in various “OMICs” fields have revolutionized our understanding of the vast diversity and ubiquity of microbes in the biosphere. However, most of the current paradigms of microbial cell biology, and our view of how microbes live and what they are capable of, are derived from in vitro experiments on isolated strains. Even the co-culturing of mixed species to interrogate community behavior is relatively new. But the majority of microorganisms lives in complex communities in natural environments, under varying conditions, and often cannot be cultivated. Unless we obtain a detailed understanding of the near-native 3D ultrastructure of individual community members, the 3D spatial community organization, their metabolic interdependences, coordinated gene expression and the spatial organization of their macromolecular machines inventories as well as their communication strategies, we won’t be able to truly understand microbial community life. How spatial and also temporal organization in cell–cell interactions are achieved remains largely elusive. For example, a key question in microbial ecology is what mechanisms microbes employ to respond when faced with prey, competitors or predators, and changes in external factors. Specifically, to what degree do bacterial cells in biofilms act individually or with coordinated responses? What are the spatial extent and coherence of coordinated responses? In addition, networks linking organisms across a dynamic range of physical constraints and connections should provide the basis for linked evolutionary changes under pressure from a changing environment. Therefore, we need to investigate microbial responses to altered or adverse environmental conditions (including phages, predators, and competitors) and their macromolecular, metabolic responses according to their spatial organization. We envision a diverse set of tools, including optical, spectroscopical, chemical and ultrastructural imaging techniques that will be utilized to address questions regarding e.g. intra- and inter-organism interactions linked to ultrastructure, and correlated adaptive responses in gene expression, physiological and metabolic states as a consequence of the alterations of their environment. Clearly strategies for co-evolution and in general the display of adaptive strategies of a microbial network as a response to the altered environment are of high interest. While a special focus will be placed on terrestrial sole-species or mixed biofilms, we are also interested in aquatic systems, biofilms in general and microbes living in symbiosis. In this Research Topic, we wish to summarize and review results investigating interactions and possibly networks between microbes of the same or different species, their co-occurrence, as well as spatiotemporal patterns of distribution. Our goal is to include a broad spectrum of experimental and theoretical contributions, from research and review articles to hypothesis and theory, aiming at understanding microbial interactions at a systems level.

Understand how the intricacies of multispecies community life are related to human oral health. * Explores the immense opportunities presented by readily accessible, genetically tractable, genome-sequenced oral species that naturally form multispecies communities. * Highlights model systems that study oral bacterial interactions, including biofilm growth using saliva as the source of nutrition. * Emphasizes the use of genomic inquiry to probe the human oral microbiome.

This book is a treatise on microbial ecology that covers traditional and cutting-edge issues in the ecology of microbes in the biosphere. It emphasizes on study tools, microbial taxonomy and the fundamentals of microbial activities and interactions within their communities and environment as well as on the related food web dynamics and biogeochemical cycling. The work exceeds the traditional domain of microbial ecology by revisiting the evolution of cellular prokaryotes and eukaryotes and stressing the general principles of ecology. The overview of the topics, authored by more than 80 specialists, is one of the broadest in the field of environmental microbiology. The overview of the topics, authored by more than 80 specialists, is one of the broadest in the field of environmental microbiology.

The book overviews the complex interactions amongst the microbes and their possible applications. Emphasis has been made to include a wide spectrum of experimental and theoretical contributions from eminent researchers in the field. Microbial communities are the assemblages of microorganisms of various species which live together in the same environment and continuously interact with each other. The microbial cells in communities display unique phenotypes that affect the survival and reproduction of other cells present around them. These phenotypes constitute the social adaptations that drive the interactions between microbial cells. The interactions, further determine the productivity, stability and the ability of community to resist the environmental perturbations. These microbial communities live with extremely competitive niche and fight for their survival and genetic persistence. But they frequently appear in niche with multifaceted and interactive webs rather than the planktonic nature. This can be within the same species or with different species, or even with diverse genera and families. It either a competitive winner community whereas the “weaker” strain goes extinct or a competitor that coexist with their metabolic secretory potentials or a separator that assigned their own community territorial niches. Sometimes, it can be neutral or tritagonist. These microbial associations within the microbiome provides the foundation for diverse forms of microbial ecology and determined the applied perspectives for agriculture, clinical and industrial sectors. This book will be useful to postgraduate students, researchers from academic as well as industry working in the field of microbial exploration with keen interest in survival factors and mechanism of their survival by various ecological and functional strategies.

This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "Microbial Community Modeling: Prediction of Microbial Interactions and Community Dynamics" that was published in Processes

The oral cavity harbors an immense diversity of microorganisms, including bacteria, fungi, archaea, protozoa and viruses. At health, oral microbial community is thought to be in a state of homeostasis, even after numerous perturbations (e.g., toothbrushing, food intake) a day. The breach in this homeostasis can occur for instance if the perturbations become too excessive (e.g., frequent carbohydrate intake leading to acidification of the community) or the host is compromised (e.g., inadequate immune response resulting in persistent inflammation of periodontal tissue). Aggressive antimicrobial therapy (e.g., antibiotics in case of periodontal disease or preventive antibiotic therapy before and after dental extractions) is commonly applied with all the negative consequences of this approach. So far little is known on the interplay between the environmental, host and microbial factors in maintaining an ecological balance. What are the prerequisites for a healthy oral ecosystem? Can we restore an unbalanced oral microbiome? How stable is the oral microbiome through time and how robust it is to external perturbations? Gaining new insights in the ecological factors sustaining oral health will lead to conceptually new therapies and preventive programs. Recent advances in high throughput technologies have brought microbiology as a science to a new era, allowing an open-ended approach instead of focusing on few opportunistic pathogens. With this topic we would like to integrate the current high-throughput ‘omics’ tools such as metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, metaproteomics or metabolomics with biochemical, physiological, genetic or clinical parameters within the oral microbial ecosystem. We aim to address questions underlying the regulation of the ecological balance in the oral cavity by including the following areas: • Ecology of oral microbiome at health • Ecology of oral microbiome under oral diseases • Ecology of oral microbiome during non-oral diseases • Shifts in the oral microbiome by therapeutic approaches (e.g., antimicrobials, replacement therapy, pre- and probiotics) • Modeling of oral ecological shifts (e.g., animal models, in vitro microcosm models) • Complex inter- and intra-kingdom interactions (e.g., bacterial-fungal-host) related to oral ecology • Environmental (e.g., diet, tobacco), host-related (e.g., immune response, saliva composition and flow) and biotic (e.g., bacterial competition) factors influencing oral ecology • Geographic variation in oral microbial ecology and diversity

This book illustrates the importance and significance of Quorum sensing (QS), it’s critical roles in regulating diverse cellular functions in microbes, including bioluminescence, virulence, pathogenesis, gene expression, biofilm formation and antibiotic resistance. Microbes can coordinate population behavior with small molecules called autoinducers (AHL) which serves as a signal of cellular population density, triggering new patterns of gene expression for mounting virulence and pathogenesis. Therefore, these microbes have the competence to coordinate and regulate explicit sets of genes by sensing and communicating amongst themselves utilizing variety of signals. This book descry emphasizes on how bacteria can coordinate an activity and synchronize their response to external signals and regulate gene expression. The chapters of the book provide the recent advancements on various functional aspects of QS systems in different gram positive and gram negative organisms. Finally, the book also elucidates a comprehensive yet a representative description of a large number of challenges associated with quorum sensing signal molecules viz. virulence, pathogenesis, antibiotic synthesis, biosurfactants production, persister cells, cell signaling and biofilms, intra and inter-species communications, host-pathogen interactions, social interactions & swarming migration in biofilms.