Tipo
Artigos em Revista
Tipo de Documento
Artigo Completo
Título
Harmful behaviour through plasmid transfer: a successful evolutionary strategy of bacteria harbouring conjugative plasmids
Participantes na publicação
Célia P. F. Domingues (Author)
cE3c/FCUL
João S. Rebelo (Author)
cE3c/FCUL
Francisca Monteiro (Author)
cE3c/FCUL
Dep. Biologia Vegetal
cE3c
Teresa Nogueira (Author)
cE3c/FCUL
Francisco Dionísio (Author)
FACULDADE DE CIÊNCIAS DA UNIVERSIDADE DE LISBOA
cE3c/FCUL
Dep. Biologia Vegetal
cE3c
Resumo
Conjugative plasmids are extrachromosomal mobile genetic elements pervasive among bacteria. Plasmids' acquisition often lowers cells' growth rate, so their ubiquity has been a matter of debate. Chromosomes occasionally mutate, rendering plasmids cost-free. However, these compensatory mutations typically take hundreds of generations to appear after plasmid arrival. By then, it could be too late to compete with fast-growing plasmid-free cells successfully. Moreover, arriving plasmids would have to wait hundreds of generations for compensatory mutations to appear in the chromosome of their new host. We hypothesize that plasmid-donor cells may use the plasmid as a ‘weapon’ to compete with plasmid-free cells, particularly in structured environments. Cells already adapted to plasmids may increase their inclusive fitness through plasmid transfer to impose a cost to nearby plasmid-free cells and increase the replication opportunities of nearby relatives. A mathematical model suggests conditions under which the proposed hypothesis works, and computer simulations tested the long-term plasmid maintenance. Our hypothesis explains the maintenance of conjugative plasmids not coding for beneficial genes.
Data de Publicação
2022-01-17
Instituição
cE3c/FCUL
Suporte
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Identificadores da Publicação
ISSN - 0962-8436
eISSN - 1471-2970
Editora
The Royal Society
Volume
377
Fascículo
1842
Identificadores do Documento
DOI -
https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0473
URL -
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0473
Identificadores de Qualidade
Web Of Science Q1 (2020) - 6.238 - BIOLOGY - SCIE
SCIMAGO Q1 (2020) - 2.753 - Agricultural and Biological Sciences (miscellaneous)