ArticleNature communications2022
The evolution of mechanisms to produce phenotypic heterogeneity in microorganisms.
Article in Nature communications, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 1 citations in OpenAlex.
- Design of the biosensor-dependent coupling system stabilizes the high-synthesis phenotype of cell factory.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Environmental cues shape extracellular vesicles biogenesis and function in Streptococcus pneumoniae.BMC microbiology · 2026Article
- Larger colony sizes favour greater division of labour between queens and workers in ants.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2026Article
- Evolution of irreversible differentiation under stage-dependent cell differentiation.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Single-cell imaging reveals efficient nutrient uptake and growth of microalgae darkening the Greenland Ice Sheet.Nature communications · 2025Article
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- Phenotypic heterogeneity follows a growth-viability tradeoff in response to amino acid identity.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Programming Dynamic Division of Labor Using Horizontal Gene Transfer.ACS synthetic biology · 2024Article
- Revisiting the Multifaceted Roles of Bacteriocins : The Multifaceted Roles of Bacteriocins.Microbial ecology · 2024Review
- Monitoring Phenotype Heterogeneity at the Single-Cell Level withinAnalytical chemistry · 2023Article
- The reciprocal changes in dominant species with complete metabolic functions explain the decoupling phenomenon of microbial taxonomic and functional composition in a grassland.Frontiers in microbiology · 2023Article
- Article
- The evolution of mechanisms to produce phenotypic heterogeneity in microorganisms.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Relatedness and the evolution of mechanisms to divide labor in microorganisms.Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
In bacteria and other microorganisms, the cells within a population often show extreme phenotypic variation. Different species use different mechanisms to determine how distinct phenotypes are allocated between individuals, including coordinated, random, and genetic determination. However, it is not clear if this diversity in mechanisms is adaptive-arising because different mechanisms are favoured in different environments-or is merely the result of non-adaptive artifacts of evolution. We use theoretical models to analyse the relative advantages of the two dominant mechanisms to divide labour between reproductives and helpers in microorganisms. We show that coordinated specialisation is more likely to evolve over random specialisation in well-mixed groups when: (i) social groups are small; (ii) helping is more "essential"; and (iii) there is a low metabolic cost to coordination. We find analogous results when we allow for spatial structure with a more detailed model of cellular filaments. More generally, this work shows how diversity in the mechanisms to produce phenotypic heterogeneity could have arisen as adaptations to different environments.
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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.