ArticlePLoS computational biology2022
From kill the winner to eliminate the winner in open phage-bacteria systems.
Article in PLoS computational biology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed, 41 citations in OpenAlex.
- The role of phages in plant-associated microbial communities.Essays in biochemistry · 2026Review
- From hijackers to architects: the role of prophages in bacterial genome evolution.Journal of bacteriology · 2026Review
- Host physiology-dependent lysis timing shapes bacteriophage competition under nutrient fluctuations.mSystems · 2026Article
- Host Range Breadth Correlates with Genic Diversity in Honeybee Phages.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Phage Therapy in Gastrointestinal Diseases: Current Status and Challenges.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Review
- Viral Diversity of Coastal Restinga Soils From Southern Brazil.Environmental microbiology reports · 2026Article
- Sub-daily virus sampling at the Bermuda Atlantic Time Series reveals diel and depth-structured population dynamics without community-level shifts.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Prophage: agent provocateur?Archives of microbiology · 2026Review
- Host-pathogen interactions in periodontitis: an integrative interkingdom perspective.Frontiers in immunology · 2026Review
- Interkingdom microbiome physiology in colorectal cancer: barrier dysfunction, immune-metabolic signaling, and therapeutic resistance.Frontiers in physiology · 2026Review
- What is the impact of the virome and mycobiome on female reproductive tract health? A systematic scoping review.Frontiers in immunology · 2026Article
- The association of the rumen virome with methane emissions in dairy cattle.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Phage diversity mirrors bacterial strain diversity in the honey bee gut microbiota.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Host Competitive Asymmetries Accelerate Viral Evolution in a Microbe-Virus Coevolutionary System.Ecology letters · 2025Article
- Factors Affecting Phage-Bacteria Coevolution Dynamics.Viruses · 2025Review
- Defining Vaginal Community Dynamics: daily microbiome transitions, the role of menstruation, bacteriophages, and bacterial genes.Microbiome · 2024Article
- Punctuated virus-driven succession generates dynamical alternations in CRISPR-mediated microbe-virus coevolution.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2024Article
- Warming alters life-history traits and competition in a phage community.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2024Article
- Rumen protozoa and viruses: The predators within and their functions-A mini-review.JDS communications · 2024Review
- The Potential of Co-Evolution and Interactions of Gut Bacteria-Phages in Bamboo-Eating Pandas: Insights from Dietary Preference-Based Metagenomic Analysis.Microorganisms · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Phages and bacteria manage to coexist and sustain ecosystems with a high diversity of strains, despite limited resources and heavy predation. This diversity can be explained by the "kill the winner" model where virulent phages predominantly prey on fast-growing bacteria and thereby suppress the competitive exclusion of slower-growing bacteria. Here we computationally investigate the robustness of these systems against invasions, where new phages or bacteria may interact with more than one of the resident strains. The resulting interaction networks were found to self-organize into a network with strongly interacting specialized predator-prey pairs, resembling that of the "kill the winner" model. Furthermore, the "kill the winner" dynamics is enforced with the occasional elimination of even the fastest-growing bacteria strains due to a phage infecting the fast and slow growers. The frequency of slower-growing strains was increased with the introduction of even a few non-diagonal interactions. Hence, phages capable of infecting multiple hosts play significant roles both in the evolution of the ecosystem by eliminating the winner and in supporting diversity by allowing slow growers to coexist with faster growers.
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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.