ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2020
Experimental manipulation of selfish genetic elements links genes to microbial community function.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 28 citations in OpenAlex.
- Diverse Microbial Communities Assemble on Both Recalcitrant and Labile Carbon Sources.Environmental microbiology · 2026Article
- Eco-evolutionary dynamics of massive, parallel bacteriophage outbreaks in compost communities.Science advances · 2026Article
- Jumbo phage-mediated transduction of genomic islands.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Interactions at sea: on the microbiome life-cycle and biogeochemical processes.History and philosophy of the life sciences · 2025Article
- Pseudomonas aeruginosa maintains an inducible array of novel and diverse prophages over lengthy persistence in cystic fibrosis lungs.FEMS microbiology letters · 2025Article
- Functional team selection as a framework for local adaptation in plants and their belowground microbiomes.The ISME journal · 2025Review
- Polar accumulation of pyoverdin and exit from stationary phase.microLife · 2024Article
- Identifying and tracking mobile elements in evolving compost communities yields insights into the nanobiome.ISME communications · 2023Article
- Article
- Mutualistic interplay between bacteriophages and bacteria in the human gut.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2022Review
- Species interactions constrain adaptation and preserve ecological stability in an experimental microbial community.The ISME journal · 2022Article
- Directed Evolution of Microbial Communities.Annual review of biophysics · 2021Review
- Adaptive differentiation and rapid evolution of a soil bacterium along a climate gradient.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Can mobile genetic elements rescue genes from extinction?Current genetics · 2020Review
- Slightly beneficial genes are retained by bacteria evolving DNA uptake despite selfish elements.eLife · 2020Article
- Conceptual challenges in microbial community ecology.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Toward a dynamical understanding of microbial communities.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Microbial communities underpin the Earth's biological and geochemical processes, but their complexity hampers understanding. Motivated by the challenge of diversity and the need to forge ways of capturing dynamical behaviour connecting genes to function, biologically independent experimental communities comprising hundreds of microbial genera were established from garden compost and propagated on nitrogen-limited minimal medium with cellulose (paper) as sole carbon source. After 1 year of bi-weekly transfer, communities retained hundreds of genera. To connect genes to function, we used a simple experimental manipulation that involved the periodic collection of selfish genetic elements (SGEs) from separate communities, followed by pooling and redistribution across communities. The treatment was predicted to promote amplification and dissemination of SGEs and thus horizontal gene transfer. Confirmation came from comparative metagenomics, which showed the substantive movement of ecologically significant genes whose dynamic across space and time could be followed. Enrichment of genes implicated in nitrogen metabolism, and particularly ammonification, prompted biochemical assays that revealed a measurable impact on community function. Our simple experimental strategy offers a conceptually new approach for unravelling dynamical processes affecting microbial community function. This article is part of the theme issue 'Conceptual challenges in microbial community ecology'.
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