Kevin Foster

Cooperation is a central theme in the history of life. Genes have come together in genomes, cells work together in multicellular organisms, animals cooperate in societies, and species help each other in mutualisms. A major challenge for evolutionary theory is to explain how such cooperation has evolved in the face of selection for cheating and defection. My research aims to provide new insights into this problem by combining evolutionary theory with empirical work using microorganisms — in particular, bacteria — as a model system.

Microorganisms provide unique opportunities to study social behavior. The study of cooperation has traditionally been limited by the assumption that social traits have a simple genetic basis, which can be treated as a ‘black box’ in mechanistic terms. Studying microorganisms changes this, allowing the black box to be opened. Their relatively simple social behaviors can be studied in the laboratory using the latest molecular and genetic techniques and, as a lab system, microbes are ideally suited to test the general theories of social evolution. My goal is to use bacteria to investigate the evolution of cooperation, and the genetic and genomic basis for social traits. We know very little at present, and key questions include: What are the genes that code for social traits? What are the role of pleiotropy and epistasis? And how does social environment affect microbial behavior and gene expression?

Foster Lab