14 DAY TRIAL // A new investigation appears to demonstrate that selfish individuals at times benefit society, rather than harm it through their behavior.
The research was carried out in yeast cells, but the team that conducted the work says that the findings have applications in human studies as well.
The point that these scientists want to get across is that experts should start to question the old wisdom that says cooperation is the best type of behavior for everyone.
“It's a paper that says, 'Here's a stack of cards, and we just pulled a card away from right at the base of this house',” says Laurence D. Hurst, a scientist with the new study.
“One of the foundations on which a lot of the cooperation theory has been built has just been taken away,” explains the expert, who is based at the University of Bath, in England.
One of the main implications of the new work is that numerous computer models will need to be revisited in the near future, LiveScience reports.
Generally, studies conducted using such simulations assume that cooperative behavior benefits everyone, and holds that selfishness is negative for the entire study group, or for society as a whole.
In a series of experiments, the investigators used two strains of yeast to study cooperation. One of them was made out of “cheaters,” and the other out of “cooperators.”
Cooperators were yeast cells that were capable of converting sucrose into glucose and fructose. The original chemical is difficult to eat, but the resulting two can be easily turned into growth for the colony.
Conversely, cheater was yeast cells that only consumed the sugars, but did not contribute to producing them. When experts put the two together, they noticed that colonies contained both types of cells.
They say that cheaters actually play an important role in the colony. If they are inexistent, then cooperators produce too much nutrients, and have a hard time converting it to growth.
Cheaters are therefore useful in the sense that they pick up excess nutrients, essentially forcing the cooperators to ramp up production, become more efficient, and avoid wasting food.
“Those who see much less glucose do much better with it, make more growth with the food they're given,” Hurst says, quoted by LiveScience.
Details of this study appear online n the latest issue of the esteemed open-access journal PLoS Biology/ The work was sponsored by the Royal Society, Mexico's National Council of Science and Technology (Conacyt), and Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) of the UK.