ArticleGenome biology and evolution2015
In Silico Gene-Level Evolution Explains Microbial Population Diversity through Differential Gene Mobility.
Article in Genome biology and evolution, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Viral Lifecycle Dynamics and Spatial Structure Explain Why Accessory Genes Are Associated With Temperate Phages.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Spatial structure: shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2026Review
- Article
- Evolution of genome fragility enables microbial division of labor.Molecular systems biology · 2023Article
- Slightly beneficial genes are retained by bacteria evolving DNA uptake despite selfish elements.eLife · 2020Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Microbial communities can show astonishing ecological and phylogenetic diversity. What is the role of pervasive horizontal gene transfer (HGT) in shaping this diversity in the presence of clonally expanding "killer strains"? Does HGT of antibiotic production and resistance genes erase phylogenetic structure? To answer these questions, we study a spatial eco-evolutionary model of prokaryotes, inspired by recent findings on antagonistic interactions in Vibrionaceae populations. We find toxin genes evolve to be highly mobile, whereas resistance genes minimize mobility. This differential gene mobility is a requirement to maintain a diverse and dynamic ecosystem. The resistance gene repertoire acts as a core genome that corresponds to the phylogeny of cells, whereas toxin genes do not follow this phylogeny and have a patchy distribution. We also show that interstrain HGT makes the emergent phylogenetic structure robust to selective sweeps. Finally, in this evolved ecosystem we observe antagonistic interactions between, rather than within, spatially structure subpopulations, as has been previously observed for prokaryotes in soils and oceans. In contrast to ascribing the diversification and evolution of microbial communities to clonal dynamics, we show that multilevel evolution can elegantly explain the observed phylogenetic structure and ecosystem diversity.
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