Limits to the evolution of metabolic dependence in spatially structured microbial communities
Devika Ramesh, Emanuele Fara, Franziska Oschmann, Giovanni Stefano Ugolini, Roman Stocker, Simon van Vliet, Martin Ackermann, Olga T. Schubert
The paper investigates how auxotrophic mutants in E. coli populations grow in spatially structured communities, finding that growth is constrained by amino acid leakage and clustering.
iScience · Feb 5, 2026Peer-reviewedEvolutionary Biology