Microbial Munificence: Iron acquisition strategies in natural bacterioplankton populations
(Phys.org)—Of the many microbes that – like almost all life – require iron, some live in iron-limited environments. What to do? Secrete siderophores, of course: small, high-affinity iron chelating compounds that scavenge the poorly-soluble Fe3+ iron ion from the environment and make it available to cells through active transport – a process in which a cell moves a substance across a membrane from a region of lower concentration to a one of higher concentration. Interestingly, iron-carrying siderophores can be seen in an economic context as diversification-supporting public goods that can be used advantageously by bacterial populations. (In economic terms, public goods can be consumed by additional consumers without additional cost.) Historically, it's been unclear whether or not wild microbial communities can be stable enough for evolutionary diversification to be influenced by social interaction between them. Recently, however, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology demonstrated that game theory can provide...