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Picking the right metaphors for addressing microbial systems: economic theory helps understanding biological complexity

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Abstract

Any descriptive language is necessarily metaphoric and interpretative. Two somewhat overlapping—but not identical—languages have been thoroughly employed in the last decade to address the issue of regulatory complexity in biological systems: the terminology of network theory and the jargon of electric circuitry. These approaches have found many formal equivalences between the layout of extant genetic circuits and the architecture of man-made counterparts. However, these languages still fail to describe accurately key features of biological objects, in particular the diversity of signal-transfer molecules and the diffusion that is inherent to any biochemical system. Furthermore, current formalisms associated with networks and circuits can hardly face the problem of multi-scale regulatory complexity—from single molecules to entire ecosystems. We argue that the language of economic theory might be instrumental not only to portray accurately many features of regulatory networks, but also to unveil aspects of the biological complexity problem that remain opaque to other types of analyses. The main perspective opened by the economic metaphor when applied to control of microbiological activities is a focus on metabolism, not gene selfishness, as the necessary background to make sense of regulatory phenomena. As an example, we analyse and reinterpret the widespread phenomenon of catabolite repression with the formal frame of the consumer’s choice theory.

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Notes

  1. An isoquant curve is a concave-shaped line on a graph, used in the study of microeconomics that charts all the factors, or inputs, that produce a specified level of output. This graph is used as a metric for the influence that the inputs—most commonly, capital and labor—have on the obtainable level of output or production (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/isoquantcurve.asp).

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Acknowledgements

The authors are indebted to Prof. Brigitte Nerlich (University of Nottingham, UK) for the critical reading of the manuscript and to the two anonymous reviewers of the article who provided the most useful insights into the matters hereby addressed.

Funding

The work in VdL Lab work is funded by the SETH (RTI2018-095584-B-C42) (MINECO/FEDER) and SyCoLiM (ERA-COBIOTECH 2018—PCI2019-111859–2) Projects of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, the MADONNA (H2020-FET-OPEN-RIA-2017–1-766975), BioRoboost (H2020-NMBP-BIO-CSA-2018–820699), SynBio4Flav (H2020-NMBP-TR-IND/H2020-NMBP-BIO-2018–814650) and MIX-UP (MIX-UP H2020-BIO-CN-2019–870294) Contracts of the European Union and the InGEMICS-CM (S2017/BMD-3691) Project of the Comunidad de Madrid—European Structural and Investment Funds—(FSE, FECER).

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  1. Juhyun Kim

    Present address: Department of Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London, London, SW7 2AZ, UK

  2. Rafael Silva-Rocha

    Present address: Ribeirão Preto Medical School, University of São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, 14049-900, Brazil

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  1. Systems Biology Department, Centro Nacional de Biotecnología-CSIC, Campus de Cantoblanco, 28049, Madrid, Spain

    Víctor de Lorenzo

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Juhyun Kim, Rafael Silva-Rocha, and Víctor de Lorenzo contributed to the contents and writing of the article.

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Kim, J., Silva-Rocha, R. & de Lorenzo, V. Picking the right metaphors for addressing microbial systems: economic theory helps understanding biological complexity . Int Microbiol 24, 507–519 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10123-021-00194-w

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