Models of Microbial Dormancy in Biofilms and Planktonic Cultures

TL;DR

This paper develops models of microbial dormancy in biofilms and planktonic cultures, analyzing how dormancy duration affects biomass and survival, revealing different strategies' advantages in various environments.

Contribution

It introduces computational models comparing short and long microbial dormancy strategies in biofilms and planktonic cultures, highlighting their ecological implications.

Findings

Fast dormancy exit maximizes biomass in planktonic cultures.

Slower dormancy exit provides biofilm defense advantages.

Laboratory conditions may not reflect natural microbial states.

Abstract

We present models of dormancy in a planktonic culture and in biofilm, and examine the relative advantage of short dormancy versus long dormancy times in each case. Simulations and analyses indicate that in planktonic batch cultures and in chemostats, live biomass is maximized by the fastest possible exit from dormancy. The lower limit of time to reawakening is thus perhaps governed by physiological, biochemical or other constraints within the cells. In biofilm we see that the slower waker has a defensive advantage over the fast waker due to a larger amount of dormant biomass, without an appreciable difference in total live biomass. Thus it would seem that typical laboratory culture conditions can be unrepresentative of the natural state. We discuss the computational methods developed for this work.