ArticleFrontiers in microbiology2016
Fitness Trade-Offs in Competence Differentiation of Bacillus subtilis.
Article in Frontiers in microbiology, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- Cell density and single-cell heterogeneity reveal distinct competence induction dynamics in the high-GC Gram-positive Micrococcus luteus.BMC microbiology · 2026Article
- Distribution of fitness effects of cross-species transformation reveals potential for fast adaptive evolution.The ISME journal · 2023Article
- Environmental Dependence of Competitive Fitness in Rifampin-ResistantApplied and environmental microbiology · 2022Article
- Diversity of bet-hedging strategies in microbial communities-Recent cases and insights.WIREs mechanisms of disease · 2022Review
- Direct Antibiotic Activity of Bacillibactin Broadens the Biocontrol Range of Bacillus amyloliquefaciens MBI600.mSphere · 2021Article
- Surfactin Facilitates Horizontal Gene Transfer inFrontiers in microbiology · 2021Article
- Genetic Competence Drives Genome Diversity in Bacillus subtilis.Genome biology and evolution · 2018Article
- Self-sensing in Bacillus subtilis quorum-sensing systems.Nature microbiology · 2018Article
- Functional Diversity of AAA+ Protease Complexes inFrontiers in molecular biosciences · 2017Review
- A DegU-P and DegQ-Dependent Regulatory Pathway for the K-state inFrontiers in microbiology · 2016Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
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Abstract
In the stationary phase, Bacillus subtilis differentiates stochastically and transiently into the state of competence for transformation (K-state). The latter is associated with growth arrest, and it is unclear how the ability to develop competence is stably maintained, despite its cost. To quantify the effect differentiation has on the competitive fitness of B. subtilis, we characterized the competition dynamics between strains with different probabilities of entering the K-state. The relative fitness decreased with increasing differentiation probability both during the stationary phase and during outgrowth. When exposed to antibiotics inhibiting cell wall synthesis, transcription, and translation, cells that differentiated into the K-state showed a selective advantage compared to differentiation-deficient bacteria; this benefit did not require transformation. Although beneficial, the K-state was not induced by sub-MIC concentrations of antibiotics. Increasing the differentiation probability beyond the wt level did not significantly affect the competition dynamics with transient antibiotic exposure. We conclude that the competition dynamics are very sensitive to the fraction of competent cells under benign conditions but less sensitive during antibiotic exposure, supporting the picture of stochastic differentiation as a fitness trade-off.
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