ArticleNature communications2021
Ecological memory preserves phage resistance mechanisms in bacteria.
Article in Nature communications, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 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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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 11 citations in OpenAlex.
- CRISPR-Cas immune repertoires as an ecological record of bacterial interactions with mobile genetic elements in the human gut.Gut microbes · 2026Article
- ssDNA phage FLiP resides in dsDNA form in resistant Flavobacterium host.Biology direct · 2025Article
- Analysis of a model for bacteriophage infections and bacteria defense: a synergetics perspective.Frontiers in network physiology · 2025Article
- Novel MRSA-targeting phage MetB16: Genomic features, structural insights, and therapeutic applications.Turkish journal of biology = Turk biyoloji dergisi · 2025Article
- A heritable iron memory enables decision-making inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Transient eco-evolutionary dynamics early in a phage epidemic have strong and lasting impact on the long-term evolution of bacterial defences.PLoS biology · 2023Article
- Article
- Quantifying the impact of ecological memory on the dynamics of interacting communities.PLoS computational biology · 2022Article
- Phenotypic flux: The role of physiology in explaining the conundrum of bacterial persistence amid phage attack.Virus evolution · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Bacterial defenses against phage, which include CRISPR-mediated immunity and other mechanisms, can carry substantial growth rate costs and can be rapidly lost when pathogens are eliminated. How bacteria preserve their molecular defenses despite their costs, in the face of variable pathogen levels and inter-strain competition, remains a major unsolved problem in evolutionary biology. Here, we present a multilevel model that incorporates biophysics of molecular binding, host-pathogen population dynamics, and ecological dynamics across a large number of independent territories. Using techniques of game theory and non-linear dynamical systems, we show that by maintaining a non-zero failure rate of defenses, hosts sustain sufficient levels of pathogen within an ecology to select against loss of the defense. This resistance switching strategy is evolutionarily stable, and provides a powerful evolutionary mechanism that maintains host-pathogen interactions, selects against cheater strains that avoid the costs of immunity, and enables co-evolutionary dynamics in a wide range of systems.
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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.