ArticleBiophysical journal2014
Genetic drift suppresses bacterial conjugation in spatially structured populations.
Article in Biophysical journal, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers.
What it found
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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.
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.
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Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed, 38 citations in OpenAlex.
- Spatial constraints determine the spread of plasmid-encoded antibiotic resistance between bacterial colonies.mSystems · 2026Article
- Influence of cell-cell distance on the ecology and evolution of microbial communities.The ISME journal · 2026Review
- Biofilm architecture determines the dissemination of conjugative plasmids.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Disentangling the feedback loops driving spatial patterning in microbial communities.NPJ biofilms and microbiomes · 2025Review
- Tuning interdomain conjugation to enablemSystems · 2024Article
- Modelling Plasmid-Mediated Horizontal Gene Transfer in Biofilms.Bulletin of mathematical biology · 2024Article
- Flagellar interference with plasmid uptake in biofilms: a joint experimental and modeling study.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2024Article
- Horizontal gene transfer enables programmable gene stability in synthetic microbiota.Nature chemical biology · 2022Article
- Dead but Not Forgotten: How Extracellular DNA, Moisture, and Space Modulate the Horizontal Transfer of Extracellular Antibiotic Resistance Genes in Soil.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2022Article
- Lineage dynamics in growing biofilms: Spatial patterns of standing vs.Frontiers in microbiology · 2022Article
- Mutability of demographic noise in microbial range expansions.The ISME journal · 2021Article
- Mathematical modelling to study the horizontal transfer of antimicrobial resistance genes in bacteria: current state of the field and recommendations.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2019Article
- Macrocolony of NDM-1 ProducingPathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2019Article
- Rapid Colorimetric Detection of Bacterial Species through the Capture of Gold Nanoparticles by Chimeric Phages.ACS nano · 2019Article
- Bacterial growth: a statistical physicist's guide.Reports on progress in physics. Physical Society (Great Britain) · 2019Review
- Chirality provides a direct fitness advantage and facilitates intermixing in cellular aggregates.PLoS computational biology · 2018Article
- Emergence of evolutionary driving forces in pattern-forming microbial populations.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Review
- Analysis of bacterial genomes from an evolution experiment with horizontal gene transfer shows that recombination can sometimes overwhelm selection.PLoS genetics · 2018Article
- Natural and Artificial Strategies To Control the Conjugative Transmission of Plasmids.Microbiology spectrum · 2018Review
- Mechanical interactions in bacterial colonies and the surfing probability of beneficial mutations.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Conjugation is the primary mechanism of horizontal gene transfer that spreads antibiotic resistance among bacteria. Although conjugation normally occurs in surface-associated growth (e.g., biofilms), it has been traditionally studied in well-mixed liquid cultures lacking spatial structure, which is known to affect many evolutionary and ecological processes. Here we visualize spatial patterns of gene transfer mediated by F plasmid conjugation in a colony of Escherichia coli growing on solid agar, and we develop a quantitative understanding by spatial extension of traditional mass-action models. We found that spatial structure suppresses conjugation in surface-associated growth because strong genetic drift leads to spatial isolation of donor and recipient cells, restricting conjugation to rare boundaries between donor and recipient strains. These results suggest that ecological strategies, such as enforcement of spatial structure and enhancement of genetic drift, could complement molecular strategies in slowing the spread of antibiotic resistance genes.
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Registered trials
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.