ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2010
Within-host competition selects for plasmid-encoded toxin-antitoxin systems.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2010. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed, 37 citations in OpenAlex.
- Acquisition and erosion of toxin-antitoxin systems in bacterial chromosomes.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- CRISPR-Cas is beneficial in plasmid competition, but limited by competitor toxin-antitoxin activity when horizontally transferred.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Beyond plasmid addiction: the role of toxin-antitoxin systems in the selfish behavior of mobile genetic elements.Journal of bacteriology · 2025Review
- A noncanonical intrinsic terminator in the HicAB toxin-antitoxin operon promotes the transmission of conjugative antibiotic resistance plasmids.Nucleic acids research · 2025Article
- Toxin-Antitoxin Systems Reflect Community Interactions Through Horizontal Gene Transfer.Molecular biology and evolution · 2024Article
- Friend or Foe: Protein Inhibitors of DNA Gyrase.Biology · 2024Review
- A mathematician's guide to plasmids: an introduction to plasmid biology for modellers.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2023Review
- Applications of toxin-antitoxin systems in synthetic biology.Engineering microbiology · 2023Review
- Spatial structure and benefits to hosts allow plasmids with and without post-segregational killing systems to coexist.Biology letters · 2023Article
- Biology and evolution of bacterial toxin-antitoxin systems.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2022Review
- Evolutionary Pathways and Trajectories in Antibiotic Resistance.Clinical microbiology reviews · 2021Article
- Conjugative plasmid-encoded toxin-antitoxin system PrpT/PrpA directly controls plasmid copy number.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Review
- A bacterial toxin-antitoxin module is the origin of inter-bacterial and inter-kingdom effectors of Bartonella.PLoS genetics · 2017Article
- Why so narrow: Distribution of anti-sense regulated, type I toxin-antitoxin systems compared with type II and type III systems.RNA biology · 2017Review
- Genomic analyses of Neisseria gonorrhoeae reveal an association of the gonococcal genetic island with antimicrobial resistance.The Journal of infection · 2016Article
- Recovery of plasmid pEMB1, whose toxin-antitoxin system stabilizes an ampicillin resistance-conferring β-lactamase gene in Escherichia coli, from natural environments.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2015Article
- Ecological dynamics and complex interactions of Agrobacterium megaplasmids.Frontiers in plant science · 2014Review
- To be or not to be: regulation of restriction-modification systems and other toxin-antitoxin systems.Nucleic acids research · 2014Review
- Cryptic Streptococcus mutans 5.6-kb plasmids encode a toxin-antitoxin system for plasmid stabilization.Journal of oral microbiology · 2013Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Toxin-antitoxin (TA) systems are commonly found on bacterial plasmids. The antitoxin inhibits toxin activity unless the system is lost from the cell. Then the shorter lived antitoxin degrades and the cell becomes susceptible to the toxin. Selection for plasmid-encoded TA systems was initially thought to result from their reducing the number of plasmid-free cells arising during growth in monoculture. However, modelling and experiments have shown that this mechanism can only explain the success of plasmid TA systems under a restricted set of conditions. Previously, we have proposed and tested an alternative model explaining the success of plasmid TA systems as a consequence of competition occurring between plasmids during co-infection of bacterial hosts. Here, we test a further prediction of this model, that competition between plasmids will lead to the biased accumulation of TA systems on plasmids relative to chromosomes. Transposon-encoded TA systems were added to populations of plasmid-containing cells, such that TA systems could insert into either plasmids or chromosomes. These populations were enriched for transposon-containing cells and then incubated in environments that did, or did not, allow effective within-host plasmid competition to occur. Changes in the ratio of plasmid- to chromosome-encoded TA systems were monitored. In agreement with our model, we found that plasmid-encoded TA systems had a competitive advantage, but only when host cells were sensitive to the effect of TA systems. This result demonstrates that within-host competition between plasmids can select for TA systems.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.