ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2014
Importance of positioning for microbial evolution.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 96 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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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
96 citing papers in PubMed.
- Chemically modified and inactivated bacteria enable intra-biofilm drug delivery and long-term immunity against implant infections.Nature biomedical engineering · 2026Article
- Influence of cell-cell distance on the ecology and evolution of microbial communities.The ISME journal · 2026Review
- Competition between Pseudomonas species constrains ecological diversification in polymicrobial biofilms.NPJ biofilms and microbiomes · 2025Article
- Self-organization of cellulose-producing microbial communities during biofilm spreading.Soft matter · 2025Article
- Community Complexity Does Not Weaken Pairwise Coevolution in a Soil Bacterial Community.Ecology letters · 2025Article
- Evidence of ESBL plasmid transfer and selective persistence of multiple host-associatedApplied and environmental microbiology · 2025Article
- Ultrasensitive Characterization of Native Bacterial Biofilms via Dynamic Nuclear Polarization-Enhanced Solid-State NMR.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2025Article
- Disentangling the feedback loops driving spatial patterning in microbial communities.NPJ biofilms and microbiomes · 2025Review
- Presence of a biofilm beneficiary alters the evolutionary trajectory of a biofilm former.The ISME journal · 2025Article
- Anti-Biofilm Effects of Z102-E ofFoods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Quantifying massively parallel microbial growth with spatially mediated interactions.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- Tapping into the native Pseudomonas bacterial biofilm structure by high-resolution multidimensional solid-state NMR.Journal of magnetic resonance (San Diego, Calif. : 1997) · 2023Article
- Collective protection against the type VI secretion system in bacteria.The ISME journal · 2023Article
- Evolution of cyclic di-GMP signalling on a short and long term time scale.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2023Article
- In Situ Raman Analysis of Biofilm Exopolysaccharides Formed inInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2023Article
- Understanding cellular growth strategies via optimal control.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2023Article
- Review
- Mechanisms driving spatial distribution of residents in colony biofilms: an interdisciplinary perspective.Open biology · 2022Review
- Evolution-proof inhibitors of public good cooperation: a screening strategy inspired by social evolution theory.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2022Article
- Spatial Structure Formation by RsmE-Regulated Extracellular Secretions in Pseudomonas fluorescens Pf0-1.Journal of bacteriology · 2022Article
36 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Microbes commonly live in dense surface-attached communities where cells layer on top of one another such that only those at the edges have unimpeded access to limiting nutrients and space. Theory predicts that this simple spatial effect, akin to plants competing for light in a forest, generates strong natural selection on microbial phenotypes. However, we require direct empirical tests of the importance of this spatial structuring. Here we show that spontaneous mutants repeatedly arise, push their way to the surface, and dominate colonies of the bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens Pf0-1. Microscopy and modeling suggests that these mutants use secretions to expand and push themselves up to the growth surface to gain the best access to oxygen. Physically mixing the cells in the colony, or introducing space limitations, largely removes the mutant's advantage, showing a key link between fitness and the ability of the cells to position themselves in the colony. We next follow over 500 independent adaptation events and show that all occur through mutation of a single repressor of secretions, RsmE, but that the mutants differ in competitiveness. This process allows us to map the genetic basis of their adaptation at high molecular resolution and we show how evolutionary competitiveness is explained by the specific effects of each mutation. By combining population level and molecular analyses, we demonstrate how living in dense microbial communities can generate strong natural selection to reach the growing edge.
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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.