Growth rate maximization is an important fitness strategy for microbes. However, the wide distribution of slow-growing oligotrophic microbes in ecosystems suggests that rapid growth is often not favored across ecological environments. In many circumstances, there exist trade-offs between growth and other important traits (e.g., adaptability and survival) due to proteome allocation constraints. Proteome investments on alternative traits could compromise growth rate and microbes need to adopt bet-hedging strategies to improve fitness in fluctuating environments. Here we review the mechanistic role of trade-offs in controlling bacterial growth and further highlight its ecological implications in driving the emergences of many important ecological phenomena such as co-existence, population heterogeneity and oligo- trophic/copiotrophic lifestyles.

Xiongfeng Dai received the B.S. degree in school of life sciences in Nanjing Agricultural University and later obtained a PhD degree in school of life sciences of Peking University (Beijing, China). He is current a professor and principal investigator at the School of Life Sciences, Central China Normal University (CCNU).  He has won several scientific prizes including Young Changjiang Scholar of the Ministry of Education of China, the Ministry of Education Young Outstanding Research Achievement Award, the Hubei Youth Science and Technology Innovation Award, and the Second Prize of the Hubei Provincial Natural Science Award (Ranking first). He has published corresponding-author papers in leading journals such as Nature Microbiology, Science Advances, PNAS, Nature Communications, and Nucleic Acids Research. His lab focuses on quantitative and systems microbiology, particularly on the environmental adaptation and growth control of microbial cells. He aims to develop a comprehensive understanding of various evolutionarily diverged bacterial species, i.e., the intrinsic constraint of growth phenotypes across species; the trade-off between growth and other physiological objectives; the physiological and mechanistic origin of oligotrophic/copiotrophic lifestyles.