ArticleNature communications2017
A polychromatic 'greenbeard' locus determines patterns of cooperation in a social amoeba.
Article in Nature communications, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers.
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Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed.
- A gradient green-beard gene in fission yeast.EMBO reports · 2026Article
- Hypermutable hotspot enables the rapid evolution of self/non-self recognition genes inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Mutual suppression between mutations in the Dictyostelium Greenbeard pathway restores wild-type development.BMC genomics · 2025Article
- Going against the family: Perturbation of a greenbeard pathway leads to falsebeard cheating.iScience · 2024Article
- The greenbeard gene tgrB1 regulates altruism and cheating in Dictyostelium discoideum.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Group-selection via aggregative propagule-formation enables cooperative multicellularity in an individual based, spatial model.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- The effect of cooperator recognition on competition among clones in spatially structured microbial communities.PloS one · 2024Article
- Developmental constraints enforce altruism and avert the tragedy of the commons in a social microbe.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Varied solutions to multicellularity: The biophysical and evolutionary consequences of diverse intercellular bonds.Biophysics reviews · 2022Review
- Context dependence in the symbiosis betweenEvolution letters · 2022Article
- The Conserved Serine Transporter SdaC Moonlights To Enable Self Recognition.Journal of bacteriology · 2022Article
- Mutant resources for functional genomics in Dictyostelium discoideum using REMI-seq technology.BMC biology · 2021Article
- Cyclic AMP is dispensable for allorecognition in Dictyostelium cells overexpressing PKA-C.Journal of cell science · 2021Article
- The Consequences of Budding versus Binary Fission on Adaptation and Aging in Primitive Multicellularity.Genes · 2021Article
- Search for MHC/TCR-Like Systems in Living Organisms.Frontiers in immunology · 2021Article
- Antagonistic interactions subdue inter-species green-beard cooperation in bacteria.Journal of evolutionary biology · 2020Article
- WildEcology and evolution · 2020Article
- Variation at an adhesin locus suggests sociality in natural populations of the yeastProceedings. Biological sciences · 2019Article
- Conditional expression explains molecular evolution of social genes in a microbe.Nature communications · 2019Article
- Direct visualization of a molecular handshake that governs kin recognition and tissue formation in myxobacteria.Nature communications · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Cheaters disrupt cooperation by reaping the benefits without paying their fair share of associated costs. Cheater impact can be diminished if cooperators display a tag ('greenbeard') and recognise and preferentially direct cooperation towards other tag carriers. Despite its popular appeal, the feasibility of such greenbeards has been questioned because the complex patterns of partner-specific cooperative behaviours seen in nature require greenbeards to come in different colours. Here we show that a locus ('Tgr') of a social amoeba represents a polychromatic greenbeard. Patterns of natural Tgr locus sequence polymorphisms predict partner-specific patterns of cooperation by underlying variation in partner-specific protein-protein binding strength and recognition specificity. Finally, Tgr locus polymorphisms increase fitness because they help avoid potential costs of cooperating with incompatible partners. These results suggest that a polychromatic greenbeard can provide a key mechanism for the evolutionary maintenance of cooperation.
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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.