Competition in the chemostat: A comparison of inhibitory and lethal offensive strategies

Martha L. Abell, James P. Braselton, Lorraine M. Braselton

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Competing species use a variety of strategies to gain an advantage over a competitor. We show that a desirable auxotrophic mutant can sometimes gain a growth advantage over its parental (or, wild-type) organism by using an offensive inhibitory or lethal strategy against the parental organism that lower's the parental organism's growth rate. Our numerical results indicate that inhibitive offensive strategies can stabilize a system while lethal offensive strategies can destabilize a system. Thus, even though a mutant may have a lower growth rate and/or higher metabolic needs than the parental organism, it may gain an advantage over the parental organism if it can limit the parental organism's growth allowing it to coexist with the parental organism.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)10-25
Number of pages16
JournalMathematics and Computers in Simulation
Volume72
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 3 2006

Scopus Subject Areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science
  • Applied Mathematics
  • Numerical Analysis
  • Modeling and Simulation

Keywords

  • Auxotroph
  • Chemostat
  • Competition
  • Metabolite
  • Mutation

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