Exploring the evolutionary fate of a mutualistic community using automated microbial culture system

Microbes are ubiquitous around the world, forming systems where they interact through competition or cooperation. Especially in the form of cooperation, exchange of essential metabolites, known as metabolic cross-feeding, plays a fundamental role in the assembly of microbial communities. An extreme case of metabolic cross-feeding is an obligate mutualism, where one organism can only grow with the help of a partner supplying metabolites (e.g., amino acid). When they face environmental stresses such as antibiotics, it is unclear whether the benefit that causes the formation of obligate ecological mutualism may benefit (or cost) the members to increases (inhibits) resistance through interactions at the evolutionary scale. Another fascinating question is whether an additional benefit (e.g., an enzyme that helps the community persistence against environmental change) will select the community to increase the resistance.
Here, I will report my ongoing research progress of obligate cross-feedings involving β-lactamase and discuss the conditions where the benefit can overcome the cost of the obligate interaction. I have started to address this issue by conducting laboratory evolution experiments with an automated culture system which can automatically adjust the strength of the stress (i.e., concentration of the antibiotics), so that the focal microbes have to get evolved. I will also share my story about building this automated culture system.