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Alan Pacheco @pachecolab.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Overall, our findings challenge the idea of neatly defined trophic layers in leaf microbiomes and highlight the complementary roles of carbon and vitamin exchange in shaping microbial community dynamics and coexistence. A huge thank you to all involved for the amazing collaboration!

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Alan Pacheco @pachecolab.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

These distinct mechanisms produced strikingly different ecological outcomes: from stable coexistence and competitive exclusion to oscillatory dynamics. Metabolic modeling with the group of @dsegre.bsky.social allowed us to peer into the mechanisms of these states and modulate them experimentally.

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Alan Pacheco @pachecolab.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

In one case, the recipient could even compete with the degrader for the primary substrate itself. Instead, vitamin exchange emerged as a critical mechanism enabling the interaction, highlighting how positive interactions can arise through very different metabolic routes.

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Alan Pacheco @pachecolab.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

While we identified cases in which plant polysaccharide degraders directly enabled the growth of recipient strains, the major polysaccharide-derived monomers often played only a minor role in sustaining these interactions.

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Alan Pacheco @pachecolab.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

We combined microfluidics, metabolomics, and modeling to investigate how trophic interaction dynamics can emerge among leaf-associated bacteria during plant polysaccharide degradation. What we found was more complex than we expected:

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Alan Pacheco @pachecolab.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

New here, so hoping for a grace period for posting papers a bit late! Excited to finally share our work from my time in the Vorholt Lab, co-led with Stefano Ugolini in the Stocker group at ETH and collaborators from the Segrè lab at BU and the NCCR Microbiomes. doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-73686-w

doi.org

Metabolic feedbacks drive population dynamics and can lead to oscillations among leaf bacteria - Nature Communications

Plant-associated bacteria engage in complex metabolic interactions. Here authors used microfluidics and computational modeling to identify molecular drivers of these interactions and disentangle their...

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Alan Pacheco @pachecolab.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Hello from the Pacheco Lab! It's about time for a first post, and what better time than on the lab's first birthday! We study the metabolic ecology of microbial communities, using computation and experiments to understand and engineer interactions and community assembly -> more at pachecolab.com!

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