ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2010
Rapid evolution of stability and productivity at the origin of a microbial mutualism.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2010. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 110 papers.
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Who cites it
110 citing papers in PubMed, 30 citations in OpenAlex.
- Methanogenesis associated with altered microbial production of short-chain fatty acids and human-host metabolizable energy.The ISME journal · 2025Trial
- Minimizing co-growth as a broad predictor of community robustness.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Single-cell assembled genomes predict enhanced bacterial metabolic cross-feeding potential in carbon-enriched soils.The ISME journal · 2026Article
- Metabolic interplay in a synthetic consortium: insights into the mediating role of a minority species.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Microbial model communities exhibit widespread metabolic interdependencies.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Membrane changes during syntrophic interactions of an archaeal-bacterial coculture.BMC microbiology · 2025Article
- Strengthen or Weaken: Evolutionary Directions of Cross-Feeding After Formation.Environmental microbiology reports · 2025Review
- Partner dependency alters patterns of coevolutionary selection in mutualisms.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Habitat filtering more than microbiota origin controls microbiome transplant outcomes in soil.The ISME journal · 2025Article
- Host metabolite production and microbiome dynamics: effects of long-term diatom adaptation to warming.ISME communications · 2025Article
- The evolution of reduced facilitation in a four-species bacterial community.Evolution letters · 2024Article
- Origin of biogeographically distinct ecotypes during laboratory evolution.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Genome-scale community modelling reveals conserved metabolic cross-feedings in epipelagic bacterioplankton communities.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Experimental evolution for cell biology.Trends in cell biology · 2023Review
- Physiological and evolutionary contexts of a new symbiotic species from the nitrogen-recycling gut community of turtle ants.The ISME journal · 2023Article
- RespectM revealed metabolic heterogeneity powers deep learning for reshaping the DBTL cycle.iScience · 2023Article
- Synthetic Denitrifying Communities Reveal a Positive and Dynamic Biodiversity-Ecosystem Functioning Relationship during Experimental Evolution.Microbiology spectrum · 2023Article
- Evolutionary repeatability of emergent properties of ecological communities.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Eco-evolutionary modelling of microbial syntrophy indicates the robustness of cross-feeding over cross-facilitation.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Methanogen Levels Are Significantly Associated with Fecal Microbiota Composition and Alpha Diversity in Healthy Adults and Irritable Bowel Syndrome Patients.Microbiology spectrum · 2022Article
50 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Mutualistic interactions are taxonomically and functionally diverse. Despite their ubiquity, however, the basic ecological and evolutionary processes underlying their origin and maintenance are poorly understood. A major reason for this is the lack of an experimentally tractable model system. We examine the evolution of an experimentally imposed obligate mutualism between sulfate-reducing and methanogenic microorganisms that have no known history of previous interaction. Twenty-four independent pairings (cocultures) of the bacterium Desulfovibrio vulgaris and the archaeon Methanococcus maripaludis were established and followed for 300 community doublings in two environments, one allowing for the development of a heterogeneous distribution of resources and the other not. Evolved cocultures grew up to 80% faster and were up to 30% more productive (biomass yield per mole of substrate) than the ancestors. The evolutionary process was marked by periods of significant instability leading to extinction of two of the cocultures, but it resulted in more stable, efficient, and productive mutualisms for most replicated pairings. Comparisons of evolved cocultures with those assembled from one evolved mutualist and one ancestral mutualist showed that evolution of both species contributed to improved productivity. Surprisingly, however, overall improvements in growth rate and yield were less than the sum of the individual contributions, suggesting antagonistic interactions between mutations from the coevolved populations. Physical constraints on the transfer of metabolites in the evolution environment affected the evolution of M. maripaludis, but not of D. vulgaris. Together, these results demonstrate that challenges can imperil nascent obligate mutualisms and demonstrate the evolutionary responses that enable their persistence and future evolution.
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