The research group of the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Science has an advantage over specialists in bioinformatics analysis of microorganisms, and on the other hand, generalists can easily become specialists in the process of evolution. Shown that it tends to change.
In the natural world, while there are organisms that have a "generalist" strategy that can respond to various environments, there are also organisms that have a "specialist" strategy that is specific to a specific environment.This is a fact that is easy to understand intuitively, but no experimental analysis has been conducted on questions such as "Which strategy is advantageous?" And "Why do organisms with two strategies coexist?" rice field.
Therefore, the group constructed a database that collects and organizes microbial community sequence data of 61 types of environments acquired by researchers around the world, and classifies microorganisms into specialists and generalists.Evolutionary analysis of these revealed that generalists have an advantage over specialists in prospering their offspring.In addition, it has been found that generalists tend to easily become specialists in the process of evolution.It is thought that the balance of coexistence between the two is maintained by such "generalist-driven evolution."
Since this model does not presuppose the properties peculiar to microorganisms, it is considered to give suggestions on the formation of general ecosystems.
Paper information:[Nature Communications] Generalist species drive microbial dispersion and evolution
