Coarse-grained ecological metabolic theory
Duration of contract: 4 years
Planned starting date: Fall 2024
Place of work: University of Vienna
Main supervisor: Shaul Pollak (Lab homepage)
Project description:
The ultimate goal of this project is to develop a theory that unites ecosystems through the lens of microbial metabolism and provides a quantitative and testable framework to analyze patterns in species and metabolite abundances across the different work packages of the Cluster of Excellence. The internal metabolism of each microbe is made up of thousands of co-dependent reactions that are far from equilibrium and change with time and depend on the environment, which can also change in small time and length-scales. A detailed description of all metabolic transformations in a microbial community composed of billions of individuals from thousands of species is unfeasible, and a new paradigm is needed. Recent works that used simplified representations of bacterial physiology identified fundamental tradeoffs that arise from cellular resource investment into energy production, biomass generation, and maintenance at the individual level. This provides a fertile ground to incorporate coarse-grained physiology into an ecological framework considering the co-habitation of other metabolic strategies, microbe-microbe interactions, different and varying environmental conditions such as stoichiometry of nutrients and energy availability, and so on. This will build on the rich community and ecosystem ecological theory literature, the metabolic theory of ecology, network and complexity science, as well as statistical physics and thermodynamics. Candidates with strong theoretical backgrounds and experience in modeling complex biological systems using tools from statistical physics are encouraged to apply.