Abstract

Many natural metabolic networks organize into a market-like metabolic communities: individuals compartmentalize (=divide) costs to run metabolism and co-live exchanging metabolic goods, or resources. We learnt a lot about economy inside a cell by over 15 years of studying “nomadic” microbes in monocultures – but are the same principles applicable to metabolic economies? If so, what are the objectives, and which constraints do these systems face? 

In this talk I will provide a short summary of the economic logic we apply to single metabolic networks. The corner piece to obtain a rulebook of distributed metabolic systems, I believe, is defining the balance between investments and returns. I will present my vision on how to master this balance using a synergy of theory and experiments, and how the idea builds on decision making inside individual cells. Outside the fundamental interest in their inner workings, I share the hope that this research would enable engineering multi-scale complex metabolic communities: from building synthetic organelles in novel microbial cell factories to engineered microbial- and microbe-higher eukaryote communities.

Biosketch

Pranas Grigaitis studied Biochemistry at Vilnius University (Lithuania) and obtained his MSc in Systems Biology at the University of Heidelberg. In 2019, Pranas joined the Systems Biology Lab at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (NL), where he did his doctoral work on microbial growth strategies, and currently is a post-doc within a Human Frontiers Science Program-funded project on metabolic division of labor in ant colonies.