ArticleNature communications2022
Mutational meltdown of putative microbial altruists in Streptomyces coelicolor colonies.
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 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- Colony politics to chemical warfare: phenotypic plasticity in Streptomyces.Essays in biochemistry · 2026Review
- Comparative Genomics and Metabolomics of Domesticated, Pladienolide-ProducingJournal of natural products · 2026Article
- Spatial structure: shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2026Review
- The adaptation chip: repurposing the principles of the ichip for guiding in situ experimental evolution.ISME communications · 2026Article
- Factors that influence the caste ratio in a bacterial division of labour.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Prophage induction can facilitate the in vitro dispersal of multicellular Streptomyces structures.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- Correction of non-random mutational biases along a linear bacterial chromosome by the mismatch repair endonuclease NucS.Nucleic acids research · 2024Article
- Article
- Exploring a general multi-pronged activation strategy for natural product discovery in Actinomycetes.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Resistance against aminoglycoside antibiotics via drug or target modification enables community-wide antiphage defense.microLife · 2024Article
- The Best of Both Worlds-Streptomyces coelicolor and Streptomyces venezuelae as Model Species for Studying Antibiotic Production and Bacterial Multicellular Development.Journal of bacteriology · 2023Review
- Evolution of genome fragility enables microbial division of labor.Molecular systems biology · 2023Article
- Unravelling the DNA sequences carried by Streptomyces coelicolor membrane vesicles.Scientific reports · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
In colonies of the filamentous multicellular bacterium Streptomyces coelicolor, a subpopulation of cells arises that hyperproduces metabolically costly antibiotics, resulting in a division of labor that increases colony fitness. Because these cells contain large genomic deletions that cause massive reductions to individual fitness, their behavior is similar to altruistic worker castes in social insects or somatic cells in multicellular organisms. To understand these mutant cells' reproductive and genomic fate after their emergence, we use experimental evolution by serially transferring populations via spore-to-spore transfer for 25 cycles, reflective of the natural mode of bottlenecked transmission for these spore-forming bacteria. We show that in contrast to wild-type cells, putatively altruistic mutant cells continue to decline in fitness during transfer while they lose more fragments from their chromosome ends. In addition, the base-substitution rate in mutants increases roughly 10-fold, possibly due to mutations in genes for DNA replication and repair. Ecological damage, caused by reduced sporulation, coupled with DNA damage due to point mutations and deletions, leads to an inevitable and irreversible type of mutational meltdown in these cells. Taken together, these results suggest the cells arising in the S. coelicolor division of labor are analogous to altruistic reproductively sterile castes of social insects.
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