Evidence map›Paper›PMID 23431270›Full record

ArticlePLoS biology2013

Parallel evolutionary dynamics of adaptive diversification in Escherichia coli.

Matthew D Herron, Michael Doebeli

Open access · goldAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in PLoS biology, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 113 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
113citing papers in PubMed
24.6field-weighted citation impact, top 1% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

113 citing papers in PubMed, 220 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Article
  2. Review
  3. Ecological diversification in rapidly evolving populations.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025
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  4. Frequency-dependent fitness effects are ubiquitous.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025
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  6. Detecting (the Absence of) Species Interactions in Microbial Ecological Systems.Studies in applied mathematics (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025
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  7. Article
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  9. Evolution of pH-sensitive transcription termination inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024
    Article
  10. Article
  11. Article
  12. Article
  13. Article
  14. Article
  15. Convergent genetic adaptation ofFrontiers in molecular biosciences · 2024
    Article
  16. Article
  17. Evolutionary repeatability of emergent properties of ecological communities.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023
    Review
  18. Article
  19. Article
  20. Article

53 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.

Matthew D HerronDepartment of Zoology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Michael Doebeli
University of British Columbia · CA

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

The causes and mechanisms of evolutionary diversification are central issues in biology. Geographic isolation is the traditional explanation for diversification, but recent theoretical and empirical studies have shown that frequency-dependent selection can drive diversification without isolation and that adaptive diversification occurring in sympatry may be an important source of biological diversity. However, there are no empirical examples in which sympatric lineage splits have been understood at the genetic level, and it is unknown how predictable this process is-that is, whether similar ecological settings lead to parallel evolutionary dynamics of diversification. We documented the genetic basis and the evolutionary dynamics of adaptive diversification in three replicate evolution experiments, in which competition for two carbon sources caused initially isogenic populations of the bacterium Escherichia coli to diversify into two coexisting ecotypes representing different physiological adaptations in the central carbohydrate metabolism. Whole-genome sequencing of clones of each ecotype from different populations revealed many parallel and some unique genetic changes underlying the derived phenotypes, including changes to the same genes and sometimes to the same nucleotide. Timelines of allele frequencies extracted from the frozen "fossil" record of the three evolving populations suggest parallel evolutionary dynamics driven at least in part by a co-evolutionary process in which mutations causing one type of physiology changed the ecological environment, allowing the invasion of mutations causing an alternate physiology. This process closely corresponds to the evolutionary dynamics seen in mathematical models of adaptive diversification due to frequency-dependent ecological interactions. The parallel genetic changes underlying similar phenotypes in independently evolved lineages provide empirical evidence of adaptive diversification as a predictable evolutionary process.

Indexed as

Models, TheoreticalBiological EvolutionEscherichia coli

Identifiers

PMID23431270
PMCPMC3576414
OpenAlexW2004488361

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
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Registered trials

None linked

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.