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Home page > Seminars > Previous seminars > Seminars 2011 > MSC Seminar 2011 Jan. 17 at 11:30. Nicolas Desprat (LPS-ENS) : "Variability of public goods in a clonal population".

MSC Seminar 2011 Jan. 17 at 11:30. Nicolas Desprat (LPS-ENS) : "Variability of public goods in a clonal population"

Unless otherwise stated, seminars and defences take place at 11:30 in room 454A of Condorcet building.


Quorum sensing (involving signaling molecules) and phenotypic variability (leading to differentiation) have led to revise the notion of unicellularity in microorganism populations. Genetic innovations drive the evolution of the colony over long time scales. They are selected by the environmental pressures and must also be compatible with the existing interactions between individuals. In this context, understanding the maintenance of cooperative traits remains one of the open challenge in evolutionary biology. We address this question experimentally by monitoring public goods dynamics in microorganism populations.

In Pseudomonas aeruginosa, low iron availability in the environment triggers the synthesis of large amounts of pyoverdin, a high-affinity iron chelator recaptured by bacteria once bound to iron. Though the synthesis of these molecules involves many enzymes and imputes a metabolic cost to the producer, they are secreted to the environment and can be recaptured by other individuals. Taking advantage of the intrinsic fluorescence of pyoverdin and using mutants of pyoverdin synthesis and uptake, we study at the single cell level the dynamics of this public goods in a clonal population.


Contact : Équipe séminaires / Seminar team - Published on / Publié le 10 December 2010


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