Division of labor during bacterial warfare
- 1Department of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA; Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA
Abstract
Division of labor is commonly associated with cooperative behavior, yet one of its most extreme forms occurs during bacterial warfare, where a subset of cells undergoes suicidal lysis to release toxins. Why bacteria divide labor among a few cells rather than producing toxin uniformly remains unknown. Here, we combine timelapse microscopy and simulations, to understand the division of labor during bacterial warfare using bacteriocin (colicin) production by the gut bacterium Escherichia coli as a model system. At the single-cell level, we find that lytic toxin production is a tightly regulated event: only cells that commit to lysis produce significant toxin and then lysis only occurs once a large amount of toxin has been made. This high threshold ensures each sacrifice delivers a large dose, which is released in a rapid burst from a lysing cell. While such burst-like release appears to provide no advantage over uniform labor in well-mixed conditions, we show it becomes extremely effective in spatially structured populations where the rapid release of toxin by one cell can generate lethal concentrations locally and eliminate competitors. Finally, we explain why the lysing fraction remains so small. While an increase in the producing cells increases toxin levels, it also increases the probability of local patch extinctions. The division of labor during bacterial warfare, therefore, enables powerful localized killing while safeguarding the population from self-destruction.
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BibTeX
@misc{choudhary2026division,
title = {{Division of labor during bacterial warfare}},
author = {D. Choudhary and Y. Goulev and C. Sanchez and Q. Justman and J. Paulsson and K. R. Foster},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.64898/2026.09.21.753294},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.21.753294v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Division of labor during bacterial warfare
AU - D. Choudhary
AU - Y. Goulev
AU - C. Sanchez
AU - Q. Justman
AU - J. Paulsson
AU - K. R. Foster
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/21
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.09.21.753294
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.21.753294v1
AB - Division of labor is commonly associated with cooperative behavior, yet one of its most extreme forms occurs during bacterial warfare, where a subset of cells undergoes suicidal lysis to release toxins. Why bacteria divide labor among a few cells rather than producing toxin uniformly remains unknown. Here, we combine timelapse microscopy and simulations, to understand the division of labor during bacterial warfare using bacteriocin (colicin) production by the gut bacterium Escherichia coli as a model system. At the single-cell level, we find that lytic toxin production is a tightly regulated event: only cells that commit to lysis produce significant toxin and then lysis only occurs once a large amount of toxin has been made. This high threshold ensures each sacrifice delivers a large dose, which is released in a rapid burst from a lysing cell. While such burst-like release appears to provide no advantage over uniform labor in well-mixed conditions, we show it becomes extremely effective in spatially structured populations where the rapid release of toxin by one cell can generate lethal concentrations locally and eliminate competitors. Finally, we explain why the lysing fraction remains so small. While an increase in the producing cells increases toxin levels, it also increases the probability of local patch extinctions. The division of labor during bacterial warfare, therefore, enables powerful localized killing while safeguarding the population from self-destruction.
ER -