The Hidden Dominance of Slow-Growing Bacteria | CBIOMES News

Editor’s note: This article features research by Joseph Vallino, a senior scientist at the MBL, Ashley N. Bulseco, who completed a post-doc at the MBL, and Wenzhuo Yang, a Semester in Environmental Sciences student at the MBL.

Microbes are often associated with rapid growth. Laboratory studies frequently focus on organisms that can reproduce quickly when resources are abundant, creating the impression that fast growth is the key to microbial success. But a new study by Ashley N. Bulseco, Wenzhuo Yang, Julie A. Huber, and CBIOMES’ Joseph J. Vallino suggests that nature may reward a very different strategy. Their results indicate that natural microbial communities may be dominated not by fast-growing bacteria, but by organisms with relatively low maximum growth rates.

The researchers set out to understand how growth-rate traits are distributed in natural microbial populations. Maximum specific growth rate is an important ecological trait because it determines whether an organism can keep pace in environments where cells are continually removed through mixing, flushing, or other processes.