Information about how a small group of bacteria interact and influence one another could lay the groundwork for understanding how human microbiomes change — and, eventually, for engineering probiotic solutions for sickness. New research from the University of Virginia’s Department of Biomedical Engineering has produced a computational model for how six species of bacteria interact and create an ecosystem. By identifying rules of behavior and translating findings into parameters for the model, the researchers distilled a complex system into a model and discovered new behaviors of a bacterium.