ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2013
A bacterial symbiont is converted from an inedible producer of beneficial molecules into food by a single mutation in the gacA gene.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 31 papers.
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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.
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Who cites it
31 citing papers in PubMed, 67 citations in OpenAlex.
- Effects of prey quality through the life cycle of the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum.BMC molecular and cell biology · 2026Article
- Light Affects Host-Symbiont Dynamics in the Non-Photosynthetic Social Amoeba Symbiosis.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Predation-resistant Pseudomonas bacteria engage in symbiont-like behavior with the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum.The ISME journal · 2023Article
- Environmental stress promotes the persistence of facultative bacterial symbionts in amoebae.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Ecological Niche-Inspired Genome Mining Leads to the Discovery of Crop-Protecting Nonribosomal Lipopeptides Featuring a Transient Amino Acid Building Block.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2023Article
- Bee breweries: The unusually fermentative, lactobacilli-dominated brood cell microbiomes of cellophane bees.Frontiers in microbiology · 2023Article
- Symbiont-Induced Phagosome Changes Rather than Extracellular Discrimination Contribute to the Formation of Social Amoeba Farming Symbiosis.Microbiology spectrum · 2022Article
- A bacterial endosymbiont of the fungus Rhizopus microsporus drives phagocyte evasion and opportunistic virulence.Current biology : CB · 2022Article
- Review
- Lipopeptide-mediated bacterial interaction enables cooperative predator defense.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- The Ecology and Evolution of Amoeba-Bacterium Interactions.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2021Review
- Social amoebae establish a protective interface with their bacterial associates by lectin agglutination.Science advances · 2019Article
- Phagocyte chase behaviours: discrimination between Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria by amoebae.Biology letters · 2019Article
- Can a Symbiont (Also) Be Food?Frontiers in microbiology · 2019Article
- Article
- Burkholderia bacteria use chemotaxis to find social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum hosts.The ISME journal · 2018Article
- Synergistic activity of cosecreted natural products from amoebae-associated bacteria.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2018Article
- Farming the mitochondrial ancestor as a model of endosymbiotic establishment by natural selection.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2018Article
- Diversity of Free-Living Environmental Bacteria and Their Interactions With a Bactivorous Amoeba.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2018Article
- Predator-by-Environment Interactions Mediate Bacterial Competition in theFrontiers in microbiology · 2018Article
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7 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
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Abstract
Stable multipartite mutualistic associations require that all partners benefit. We show that a single mutational step is sufficient to turn a symbiotic bacterium from an inedible but host-beneficial secondary metabolite producer into a host food source. The bacteria's host is a "farmer" clone of the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum that carries and disperses bacteria during its spore stage. Associated with the farmer are two strains of Pseudomonas fluorescens, only one of which serves as a food source. The other strain produces diffusible small molecules: pyrrolnitrin, a known antifungal agent, and a chromene that potently enhances the farmer's spore production and depresses a nonfarmer's spore production. Genome sequence and phylogenetic analyses identify a derived point mutation in the food strain that generates a premature stop codon in a global activator (gacA), encoding the response regulator of a two-component regulatory system. Generation of a knockout mutant of this regulatory gene in the nonfood bacterial strain altered its secondary metabolite profile to match that of the food strain, and also, independently, converted it into a food source. These results suggest that a single mutation in an inedible ancestral strain that served a protective role converted it to a "domesticated" food source.
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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.