Authors
Peter L Conlin, Josephine R Chandler, Benjamin Kerr
Publication date
2014/10/1
Source
Current opinion in microbiology
Volume
21
Pages
35-44
Publisher
Elsevier Current Trends
Description
Highlights
- Antibiotic resistance and production can involve a social dimension.
- Game theory is a mathematical framework for understanding social interactions.
- Microbial population dynamics in the laboratory can be described using simple game theoretical models.
- Simple game theoretical models can be extended by adding biological details such as mutation, spatial structure, and density dependence.
In this review, we demonstrate how game theory can be a useful first step in modeling and understanding interactions among bacteria that produce and resist antibiotics. We introduce the basic features of evolutionary game theory and explore model microbial systems that correspond to some classical games. Each game discussed defines a different category of social interaction with different resulting population dynamics (exclusion, coexistence, bistability, cycling). We then explore how the framework can be …
Scholar articles
PL Conlin, JR Chandler, B Kerr - Current opinion in microbiology, 2014