Efficient growth factor production stabilizes cooperation in a cellular public goods game

IL3-producing eukaryotic cells resist invasion by non-producers and drive them to extinction in well-mixed competition, with production cost under 0.1% of benefit.

• Why it matters: Mutant “free-riders” could otherwise exploit diffusible growth factors and eliminate producers, a tragedy of the commons that theory often expects to require spatial structure.
• What they did: Competition experiments with IL3 producers versus non-producers were analyzed with evolutionary game theory, deriving a critical cost-to-benefit threshold across benefit-function shape and group size.
• The result: When production cost-to-benefit falls below that tipping point, non-producers are driven to extinction, implying efficient public good production can stabilize cooperation without spatial structure.

AI summary of the abstract · may contain errors · not medical advice · read the paper.