Optogenetic spatial patterning of cooperation in yeast populations

• Published in: Nature communications 2024-01, Vol.15 (1), p.75-14, Article 75
• Main Authors: Le Bec, Matthias, Pouzet, Sylvain, Cordier, Céline, Barral, Simon, Scolari, Vittore, Sorre, Benoit, Banderas, Alvaro, Hersen, Pascal
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 631/1647/2253; 631/326/2522; 631/326/2565/855; 631/61/318; Bandpass filters; Competition; Control methods; Cooperation; Ecosystem; Genetics; Hexose; Hexoses; Humanities and Social Sciences; Information processing; Invertase; Life Sciences; Light; Metabolism; Microbial activity; Microbiomes; Microorganisms; Models, Biological; multidisciplinary; Optics; Optogenetics; Physics; Saccharomyces cerevisiae - genetics; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Sucrose; Yeast; Yeasts
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-44379-5

Microbial communities are shaped by complex metabolic interactions such as cooperation and competition for resources. Methods to control such interactions could lead to major advances in our ability to better engineer microbial consortia for synthetic biology applications. Here, we use optogenetics to control SUC2 invertase production in yeast, thereby shaping spatial assortment of cooperator and cheater cells. Yeast cells behave as cooperators ( i.e ., transform sucrose into hexose, a public good) upon blue light illumination or cheaters ( i.e ., consume hexose produced by cooperators to grow) in the dark. We show that cooperators benefit best from the hexoses they produce when their domain size is constrained between two cut-off length-scales. From an engineering point of view, the system behaves as a bandpass filter. The lower limit is the trace of cheaters’ competition for hexoses, while the upper limit is defined by cooperators’ competition for sucrose. Cooperation mostly occurs at the frontiers with cheater cells, which not only compete for hexoses but also cooperate passively by letting sucrose reach cooperators. We anticipate that this optogenetic method could be applied to shape metabolic interactions in a variety of microbial ecosystems. Microbial communities are the siege of complex metabolic interactions including cooperation and competition. Here, the authors report the utilization of optogenetics and spatial light-patterning to activate the expression of the invertase SUC2 at selected locations and selectively switch cooperation and competition roles of the yeast cells.