{"id":238678,"date":"2026-06-10T02:25:27","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T07:25:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/how-a-single-mutation-rewired-a-23-species-bacterial-community-over-four-years"},"modified":"2026-06-10T02:25:27","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T07:25:27","slug":"how-a-single-mutation-rewired-a-23-species-bacterial-community-over-four-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/how-a-single-mutation-rewired-a-23-species-bacterial-community-over-four-years","title":{"rendered":"How a single mutation rewired a 23-species bacterial community over four years"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/how-a-single-mutation-rewired-a-23-species-bacterial-community-over-four-years2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The time-development of species communities cannot be understood solely through ecological interactions or environmental factors, as evolution can also alter community dynamics. This observation helps to understand, among other things, the consequences of antibiotic resistance.<\/p>\n<p>Evolution can alter the composition of communities, but its effects are difficult to investigate in nature, as they begin to manifest only after long periods of time. However, the rapid pace of microbial reproduction makes it possible to observe evolution in the laboratory \u201cin real time,\u201d from one generation to the next.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn studies focusing on the microbiome, using <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2023-11-competition-cross-feeding-scientists-synthetic-microbiomes.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">synthetic microbial communities<\/a>, as we did in this study, has opened up new avenues for investigating key questions related to complex communities,\u201d says Professor Teppo Hiltunen from the University of Turku.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The time-development of species communities cannot be understood solely through ecological interactions or environmental factors, as evolution can also alter community dynamics. This observation helps to understand, among other things, the consequences of antibiotic resistance. Evolution can alter the composition of communities, but its effects are difficult to investigate in nature, as they begin to [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,385],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-evolution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238678\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}