The quantitative amino acid economy of yeast reveals public versus private goods and guides syntrophic community design.

Quantitative analysis reveals that Saccharomyces cerevisiae maintains a dynamic amino acid economy with specific public and private goods, guiding synthetic community design.

• Why it matters: Understanding amino acid exchange is crucial for engineering stable microbial communities and optimizing metabolic interactions, yet the scale and dynamics of this economy are poorly characterized.
• What they did: The study mapped production, secretion, and consumption fluxes of amino acids over 24 hours in yeast, identifying key public goods like alanine and privatized resources such as aspartate, under different growth conditions.
• The result: Findings enable the rational design of synthetic auxotrophic communities by leveraging stable amino acid trade frameworks, advancing microbial engineering and metabolic cooperation strategies.