ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2022
Alternating lysis and lysogeny is a winning strategy in bacteriophages due to Parrondo's paradox.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 47 citations in OpenAlex.
- Capsular Polysaccharide Safeguards a Prophage-Bacterium Symbiosis by Preventing Collateral Attack and Promoting Viral Transmission.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Host physiology-dependent lysis timing shapes bacteriophage competition under nutrient fluctuations.mSystems · 2026Article
- Article
- Phage bioaugmentation reveals the potential of lysogeny for soil bioremediation.Communications biology · 2026Review
- Discovery and characterization of a novelPHAGE (New Rochelle, N.Y.) · 2026Article
- Isolation, characterisation and potential applications of a novel bacteriophage targeting beta-lactam-resistant Staphylococcus saprophyticus.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- The adaptive plasticity of temperate phageVirus evolution · 2026Article
- Prophages and their interactions with lytic phages in the human gut microbiota and their impact on microbial diversity, gut health, and disease.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2025Review
- Global biogeography of airborne viruses in public transit systems and their host interactions.Microbiome · 2025Article
- Urinary bacteriophage cooperation with bacterial pathogens during human urinary tract infections supports lysogenic phage therapy.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Lytic and temperate phage naturally coexist in a dynamic population model.The ISME journal · 2024Article
- Isolation and preliminary characterization of a novel bacteriophage vB_KquU_φKuK6 that infects the multidrug-resistant pathogenFrontiers in microbiology · 2024Article
- Findings and methodologies in oral phageome research: a systematic review.Journal of oral microbiology · 2024Review
- Lytic/Lysogenic Transition as a Life-History Switch.Virus evolution · 2024Article
- The value of information gathering in phage-bacteria warfare.PNAS nexus · 2024Article
- An Eco-evolutionary Model on Surviving Lysogeny Through Grounding and Accumulation of Prophages.Microbial ecology · 2023Article
- Optimizing crop rotations via Parrondo's paradox for sustainable agriculture.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Identification of integrons and gene cassette-associated recombination sites in bacteriophage genomes.Frontiers in microbiology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
SignificanceBacteriophages, the most widespread reproducing biological entity on Earth, employ two strategies of virus-host interaction: lysis of the host cell and lysogeny whereby the virus genome integrates into the host genome and propagates vertically with it. We present a population model that reveals an effect known as Parrondo's paradox in game theory: Alternating between lysis and lysogeny is a winning strategy for a bacteriophage, even when each strategy individually is at a disadvantage compared with a competing bacteriophage. Thus, evolution of bacteriophages appears to optimize the ratio between the lysis and lysogeny propensities rather than the phage burst size in any individual phase. This phenomenon is likely to be relevant for understanding evolution of other host-parasites 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.