Media composition determines outcome of microbial community assembly | Alberto Scarampi

Recorded on 10/27/2025
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Title: Media composition determines outcome of microbial community assembly
Speaker: Alberto Scarampi

This talk was recorded as part of the 'Microbial Communities: Energetics and Dynamics Across Space and Time' workshop at NITMB

Workshop Overview: Research on microbial communities presents fundamental questions about how microbes come together and co-exist in Nature and what “community-level” functions they display. This workshop will explore these open questions in the context of energetics and spatio-temporal dynamics.

As dynamic ecosystems, microbial communities exhibit energy and material fluxes and adhere to thermodynamic laws. The quantitative measurement of these fluxes and their evaluation in a thermodynamically correct manner has been lacking. The application of concepts from nonlinear, nonequilibrium thermodynamics to communities is still largely unexplored, and their
relevance to understanding community dynamics remains unknown.

Interlinked with this energetic view of microbial communities is the fact that microbial communities are temporally dynamic and almost always spatially structured. This gives rise to spatiotemporal dynamics in both species (consumers) and chemical (resources, metabolites) abundances, which are rarely quantified or modelled.

This one-week workshop aims to develop an integrated theoretical and experimental framework that accounts for the energetics of microbial communities and their spatiotemporal dynamics.
The key areas of discussion will be centered around:

• Energy balances and quantitative measurement of metabolic fluxes in microbial communities
• Thermodynamic and physiological constraints at the community and species levels
• Spatial and temporal dynamics of species and metabolites

In each area, we will examine the experimental challenges and explore possible theoretical approaches that can be applied. On the experimental side, we are particularly interested in exploring model systems and under-represented measurement approaches, such as calorimetry and spatially resolved methods. These approaches are needed to understand how energy
fluxes operate at the community-level, as well as how they vary in space and time.

NITMB Overview:
The NSF-Simons National Institute for Theory and Mathematics in Biology (NITMB) aims to integrate the disciplines of mathematics and biology in order to transform the practice of biological research and to inspire new mathematical discoveries. NITMB is a partnership between Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. It is funded by the National Science Foundation DMS-2235451 and the Simons Foundations MP-TMPS-00005320.

The mission of the NITMB is to create a nationwide collaborative research community that will generate new mathematical results and uncover the “rules of life” through theories, data-informed mathematical models, and computational and statistical tools. The NITMB leverages close collaborations between experimentalists and theorists to synergize discovery. The fundamental research done by NITMB will stimulate advances in areas as diverse as the environment, medicine, and technology development. NITMB members and visitors share space in downtown Chicago that is readily accessible to collaborators across the U.S. and the world.

NITMB uses an interlocking set of strategies and initiatives aimed at broad impacts for the mathematical and biological research communities. Targeted research bringing together mathematicians and biologists to collaborate and train the next generation of interdisciplinary scientists. Scientific long programs, workshops, and conferences enhancing collaboration between mathematics and biology. An innovative research program organized around five interrelated themes, selected because they reflect key capabilities of biological systems and interconnect with open mathematical problems.