"Imagine a nontransitive community in which, for convenience, we call the players Rock, Paper, and Scissors." It's a rather unusual line to find in a scientific paper, but the study it comes from is part of a special edition of PNAS on the evolution of social behavior. And rock-paper-scissors is not only a good way to settle an impasse; it provides a way of understanding a biological phenomenon that has been termed "survival of the weakest."
To understand this phenomenon, you have to understand what a non-transitive community is. The easiest way to understand this is to examine the three different types of bacteria used in the experiments described in the paper. One of them produces a protein, colicin, that's toxic to other cells; it also makes a set of proteins that allow it to survive the toxins it makes. Producing all these proteins exacts an energetic cost, so these bacteria can be outcompeted by cells that don't face the same burden.
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