Many types of bacteria can survive under stress by switching stochastically between two different phenotypes: the "normals" who multiply fast, but are vulnerable to stress, and the "persisters" who hardly multiply, but are resilient to stress. Previous theoretical studies of such bacterial populations have focused on the \emph{fitness}: the asymptotic rate of unbounded growth of the population. Yet for an isolated population of established (and not very large) size, a more relevant measure may be the population \emph{extinction risk} due to the interplay of adverse extrinsic variations and intrinsic noise of birth, death and switching processes. Applying a WKB approximation to the pertinent master equation of such a two-population system, we quantify the extinction risk, and find the most likely path to extinction under both favorable and adverse conditions. Analytical results are obtained both in the biologically relevant regime when the switching is rare compared with the birth and death processes, and in the opposite regime of frequent switching. We show that rare switches are most beneficial in reducing the extinction risk.
Fitness is asymptotically irrelevant under uniform competition in phenotype-structured populations
Instituto de Matemática e Computação, Universidade Federal de Itajubá（伊塔朱巴联邦大学数学与计算研究所）；Carl Gustav Carus School of Medicine, Technische Universität Dresden（德累斯顿工业大学卡尔·古斯塔夫·卡鲁斯医学院）
Stabilization of Microbial Communities by Responsive Phenotypic Switching
Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems（马克斯·普朗克复杂系统物理学研究所）；Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics（马克斯·普朗克分子细胞生物学与遗传学研究所）；Center for Systems Biology Dresden（德累斯顿系统生物学中心）；University of Cambridge（剑桥大学）
Travelling waves of invasion in microbial communities with phenotypic switching
Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems（马克斯·普朗克复杂系统物理研究所）；Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics（马克斯·普朗克分子细胞生物学与遗传学研究所）；Center for Systems Biology Dresden（德累斯顿系统生物学中心）
Optimization of sequential therapies to maximize extinction of resistant bacteria through collateral sensitivity
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid（马德里卡洛斯三世大学）；Grupo Interdisciplinar de Sistemas Complejos (GISC)（复杂系统跨学科小组 (GISC)）；Instituto de Biocomputación y Física de Sistemas Complejos, Universidad de Zaragoza（萨拉戈萨大学生物计算与复杂物理研究所）；Universidad Politécnica de Madrid（马德里理工大学）；Centro Nacional de Biotecnologia (CNB), CSIC（西班牙国家生物技术中心 (CNB)）
Evaluating the Impact of Epidemic Control via State-Dependent Markovian Switching Modeling
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens（雅典国立卡波季斯特里安大学）；Université de Lorraine（洛林大学）；CentraleSupélec, Université Paris-Saclay（巴黎萨克雷大学中央理工-高等师范学院）
Evolutionary adaptation through bet-hedging in finite populations under fluctuating environments
Grupo Interdisciplinar de Sistemas Complejos (GISC) and Departamento de Estructura de la Materia, Física Térmica y Electrónica, Universidad Complutense de Madrid（马德里康普顿斯大学复杂系统跨学科小组及物质结构、热学与电子学系）
