Bacterial vitamin sharing emerges from a balance between release and uptake
- 1University of Chicago
Abstract
Many microbes use vitamins they cannot synthesize. As a result, vitamin availability impacts microbial community composition and productivity. Yet how vitamins become available to users remains poorly understood. To understand the basis of vitamin sharing, we quantified vitamin B12 synthesis and uptake in over 200 soil, freshwater, and marine bacterial isolates. We reveal the existence of four strategies demarcated by all combinations of high or limited B12 synthesis and uptake. B12 synthesis, but not uptake, was predictable from genomes without pathway knowledge. Among synthesizers, the fraction of vitamin that was extracellular varied over 100-fold. Extracellular B12 was quantitatively predicted from a dynamic model capturing only release via death and reuptake by living cells. A subset of synthesizers rapidly reclaim released B12, resulting in limited sharing, while retainers exhibit limited release or uptake, and providers release without reuptake. Thus, extracellular B12 availability is governed not by synthesis alone, but by the balance between release and uptake.
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BibTeX
@misc{bunbury2026bacterial,
title = {{Bacterial vitamin sharing emerges from a balance between release and uptake}},
author = {F. Bunbury and T. Janas and P. Mullen and K. Scorza and S. Ghosh and J. Zhang and M. Mani and C. A. Pfister and C. Donnat and S. Kuehn},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.64898/2026.09.01.748612},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.01.748612v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Bacterial vitamin sharing emerges from a balance between release and uptake
AU - F. Bunbury
AU - T. Janas
AU - P. Mullen
AU - K. Scorza
AU - S. Ghosh
AU - J. Zhang
AU - M. Mani
AU - C. A. Pfister
AU - C. Donnat
AU - S. Kuehn
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/01
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.09.01.748612
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.01.748612v1
AB - Many microbes use vitamins they cannot synthesize. As a result, vitamin availability impacts microbial community composition and productivity. Yet how vitamins become available to users remains poorly understood. To understand the basis of vitamin sharing, we quantified vitamin B12 synthesis and uptake in over 200 soil, freshwater, and marine bacterial isolates. We reveal the existence of four strategies demarcated by all combinations of high or limited B12 synthesis and uptake. B12 synthesis, but not uptake, was predictable from genomes without pathway knowledge. Among synthesizers, the fraction of vitamin that was extracellular varied over 100-fold. Extracellular B12 was quantitatively predicted from a dynamic model capturing only release via death and reuptake by living cells. A subset of synthesizers rapidly reclaim released B12, resulting in limited sharing, while retainers exhibit limited release or uptake, and providers release without reuptake. Thus, extracellular B12 availability is governed not by synthesis alone, but by the balance between release and uptake.
ER -