Modeling Microbial Communities: A Call for Collaboration between Experimentalists and Theorists

Processes

Marco Zaccaria¹  Sandra Dedrick¹  Babak Momeni¹ 

[1] Department of Biology, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA;

关键词: microbial communities;    mathematical modeling;    community ecology;    interspecies interactions;    mechanistic modeling;    phenomenological modeling;   

DOI  :  10.3390/pr5040053

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

With our growing understanding of the impact of microbial communities, understanding how such communities function has become a priority. The influence of microbial communities is widespread. Human-associated microbiota impacts health, environmental microbes determine ecosystem sustainability, and microbe-driven industrial processes are expanding. This broad range of applications has led to a wide range of approaches to analyze and describe microbial communities. In particular, theoretical work based on mathematical modeling has been a steady source of inspiration for explaining and predicting microbial community processes. Here, we survey some of the modeling approaches used in different contexts. We promote classifying different approaches using a unified platform, and encourage cataloging the findings in a database. We believe that the synergy emerging from a coherent collection facilitates a better understanding of important processes that determine microbial community functions. We emphasize the importance of close collaboration between theoreticians and experimentalists in formulating, classifying, and improving models of microbial communities.

【 授权许可】

Unknown