ArticleNature communications2016
Rapid radiation in bacteria leads to a division of labour.
Article in Nature communications, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 45 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.
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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
45 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Disruption of bacteriophage integration site promotes rapid diversification of multicellular traits inMicrobiology spectrum · 2026Article
- Ultrasensitive Characterization of Native Bacterial Biofilms via Dynamic Nuclear Polarization-Enhanced Solid-State NMR.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2025Article
- Biofilms as more than the sum of their parts: lessons from developmental biology.Current opinion in microbiology · 2024Review
- The evolution of autonomy from two cooperative specialists in fluctuating environments.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Multicellular magnetotactic bacteria are genetically heterogeneous consortia with metabolically differentiated cells.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- Conflict-reducing innovations in development enable increased multicellular complexity.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Reciprocal signaling between quorum sensing mutants: A model for division of labor.microPublication 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
- Evolution of cyclic di-GMP signalling on a short and long term time scale.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2023Article
- Identification of Cyclic-di-GMP-Modulating Protein Residues by Bidirectionally Evolving a Social Behavior in Pseudomonas fluorescens.mSystems · 2022Article
- Pseudomonas aeruginosa Strains from Both Clinical and Environmental Origins Readily Adopt a Stable Small-Colony-Variant Phenotype Resulting from Single Mutations in c-di-GMP Pathways.Journal of bacteriology · 2022Article
- Spatial Structure Formation by RsmE-Regulated Extracellular Secretions in Pseudomonas fluorescens Pf0-1.Journal of bacteriology · 2022Article
- Enforced specialization fosters mutual cheating and not division of labour in the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa.Journal of evolutionary biology · 2022Article
- Rare and localized events stabilize microbial community composition and patterns of spatial self-organization in a fluctuating environment.The ISME journal · 2022Article
- Evolutionary Pathways and Trajectories in Antibiotic Resistance.Clinical microbiology reviews · 2021Article
- Differential Multi-cellularity Is Required for the Adaptation forIndian journal of microbiology · 2021Article
- Relatedness and the evolution of mechanisms to divide labor in microorganisms.Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
- Evolutionary Divergence of the Wsp Signal Transduction Systems in Beta- and Gammaproteobacteria.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2021Article
- Emergent transcriptional adaption facilitates convergent succession within a synthetic community.ISME communications · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The division of labour is a central feature of the most sophisticated biological systems, including genomes, multicellular organisms and societies, which took millions of years to evolve. Here we show that a well-organized and robust division of labour can evolve in a matter of days. Mutants emerge within bacterial colonies and work with the parent strain to gain new territory. The two strains self-organize in space: one provides a wetting polymer at the colony edge, whereas the other sits behind and pushes them both along. The emergence of the interaction is repeatable, bidirectional and only requires a single mutation to alter production of the intracellular messenger, cyclic-di-GMP. Our work demonstrates the power of the division of labour to rapidly solve biological problems without the need for long-term evolution or derived sociality. We predict that the division of labour will evolve frequently in microbial populations, where rapid genetic diversification is common.
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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.