의생명시스템학부

In agriculture, humans select certain crops to maximize yields or to make sweeter fruits. Such artificial selection which is applied to a single individual has been successful. Then, what if we want to artificially select a function that appears through the interaction of several species rather than a single species? This question becomes relevant for microbes because they can perform functions useful for us as a group. Despite its importance, however, artificial group selection is largely unexplored. To uncover essential factors for the successful selection on microbial collectives, I introduced a simple model and analyzed conditions where the selection becomes successful. The results show that the variation of collectives generated from the reproduction step is essential for successful selection. In this seminar, I will talk about the basic idea of artificial selection and discuss how the artificial selection on microbial collectives works.