The Regulation of Environmental Factors on the Microbial Cooperation

Microorganisms are widely presented in various environments such as soil, water, air, inside or on the surface of multi-cellular organisms, and food. There are various complicated microbial interactions, including symbiosis, mutualism, competition, antagonism, and predation, among the different microorganisms that coexist in the same environment forming a community. These complex microbial interactions can affect various cellular behaviors such as microbial growth, metabolism, performance, and social behavior. Social behavior refers to the evolving specialization and cooperation that takes place between group members to jointly survive and understanding this cooperation evolution is still a challenge for biology and social science. According to the impact experienced by the implementer and receiver, social behavior can be roughly divided into four categories: mutually beneficial, selfish, altruistic, and malicious. Cooperation increases the adaptability of the recipient and can be mutually beneficial or just altruistic. Cooperation has been widely studied from insects to humans but its impact on microbial populations has only been described recently. Social behavior models based on dynamics and evolutionary behavior, such as the snowdrift and prisoner's dilemma models, have been described in microorganisms. Moreover, microbial cooperation is also influenced by the environmental factors in which they are located. Studying the role of environmental factors on microbial cooperation from the perspective of environment-microorganism interaction is of great importance for clarifying mechanisms underlying microbial cooperation and its roles.

The goal of this Research Topic is to collect articles related to the environment-microorganism interaction in the occurrence and development of microbial cooperation. We encourage interested investigators to submit reviews and original research manuscripts aiming to promote the research progress of microbial cooperation.
We welcome submissions of Original Research, Review, Mini Review, Hypothesis, Opinion, and Perspective, focusing on the following aspects:

(1) The molecular mechanisms underlying the regulation of environmental factors on microbial cooperation;
(2) Environmental factors regulated microbial cooperation models based on dynamics and evolutionary behavior;
(3) Multi-omics of microbial cooperation, including proteomics, metabolomics, and transcriptomics;
(4) Environmental factors change associated microbial cooperations and their roles in environmental pollution treatment, industrial fermentation, agricultural planting, and human health.

Please note that both Microbial Symbioses and Systems Microbiology sections do not consider descriptive studies solely based on amplicon (e.g., 16S rRNA) profiles, unless accompanied by a clear hypothesis and experimentation, and provide insight into the microbiological system or process being studied.