ArticleNature microbiology2022
Single mutation makes Escherichia coli an insect mutualist.
Article in Nature microbiology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 45 papers.
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Who cites it
45 citing papers in PubMed, 76 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Experimental Sodalis infection eliminates ancient insect symbiont.Nature communications · 2026Article
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- Tryptophanase disruption promotes insect-bacterium mutualism.Nature microbiology · 2026Article
- Diversity, antimicrobial and herbicidal activities of actinomycetes and fungi from Hermetia illucens.BMC microbiology · 2026Article
- Cross-domain cooperation drives nutrient acquisition and metabolism in the bark beetle holobiont.The ISME journal · 2026Article
- Loss of the flagellar regulator FlhC changes the transcriptional response of plant-associatedISME communications · 2026Article
- iSymBase: an integrative functional-genomic platform for ecological exploration of insect symbionts.ISME communications · 2026Article
- Genome degradation results in nested symbiosis and endosymbiont replacement in cicadas.Nature communications · 2025Article
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- Origin and function of beneficial bacterial symbioses in insects.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2025Review
- What lurks in the dark? An innovative framework for studying diverse wild insect microbiota.Microbiome · 2025Article
- Leveraging microbial ecology for mosquito-borne disease control.Trends in parasitology · 2025Review
- Microbial Symbiosis in Lepidoptera: Analyzing the Gut Microbiota for Sustainable Pest Management.Biology · 2025Review
- Congruence between noise and plasticity in protein expression.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Heritable symbiont producing nonribosomal peptide confers extreme heat sensitivity and antifungal protection on its host.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Peculiar structural features of midgut symbiotic organ in the early development of the stinkbug Plautia stali Scott, 1874 (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae).Die Naturwissenschaften · 2025Article
- Artificial symbiont replacement in a vertically transmitted plant symbiosis reveals a role for microbe-microbe interactions in enforcing specificity.The ISME journal · 2025Article
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18 authors at 7 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Microorganisms often live in symbiosis with their hosts, and some are considered mutualists, where all species involved benefit from the interaction. How free-living microorganisms have evolved to become mutualists is unclear. Here we report an experimental system in which non-symbiotic Escherichia coli evolves into an insect mutualist. The stinkbug Plautia stali is typically associated with its essential gut symbiont, Pantoea sp., which colonizes a specialized symbiotic organ. When sterilized newborn nymphs were infected with E. coli rather than Pantoea sp., only a few insects survived, in which E. coli exhibited specific localization to the symbiotic organ and vertical transmission to the offspring. Through transgenerational maintenance with P. stali, several hypermutating E. coli lines independently evolved to support the host's high adult emergence and improved body colour; these were called 'mutualistic' E. coli. These mutants exhibited slower bacterial growth, smaller size, loss of flagellar motility and lack of an extracellular matrix. Transcriptomic and genomic analyses of 'mutualistic' E. coli lines revealed independent mutations that disrupted the carbon catabolite repression global transcriptional regulator system. Each mutation reproduced the mutualistic phenotypes when introduced into wild-type E. coli, confirming that single carbon catabolite repression mutations can make E. coli an insect mutualist. These findings provide an experimental system for future work on host-microbe symbioses and may explain why microbial mutualisms are omnipresent in nature.
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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.