ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2022
The evolution of spectrum in antibiotics and bacteriocins.
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 24 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed, 33 citations in OpenAlex.
- Microbiome ecology and antibiotic treatment failure: resistance spread, microbial competition and community engineering.Microbial genomics · 2026Review
- Bacterial weaponry and the ecological factors of competitive success.Essays in biochemistry · 2026Review
- Implications of proteome allocation constraints for understanding interbacterial antagonism.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2026Review
- ABPs: diffusible antibacterial toxins secreted by and active against diverse gram-positive bacteria.Infection and immunity · 2026Review
- The DdD protein confers intracellular and extracellular immunity to the leaderless bacteriocin enterocin DD14.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Engineered antimicrobial-derived peptides to manipulate mixed microbial systems.Microbiology spectrum · 2026Article
- Bacteriocins fromFrontiers in microbiology · 2026Review
- Strain displacement in microbiomes via ecological competition.Nature microbiology · 2025Article
- Metabolic ecology of microbiomes: Nutrient competition, host benefits, and community engineering.Cell host & microbe · 2025Review
- Article
- Predicting Antimicrobial Class Specificity of Small Molecules Using Machine Learning.Journal of chemical information and modeling · 2025Article
- Bacteriocin-Producing Enterococci Modulate Cheese Microbial Diversity.Microbial ecology · 2025Article
- Trojan horse peptide conjugates remodel the activity spectrum of clinical antibiotics.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Lysis of Escherichia coli by colicin Ib contributes to bacterial cross-feeding by releasing active β-galactosidase.The ISME journal · 2025Article
- Self-growth suppression inISME communications · 2025Article
- Uncovering the arsenal of class II bacteriocins in salivarius streptococci.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Development of antibacterial drug + bacteriophage combination assays.JAC-antimicrobial resistance · 2024Article
- Self-growth suppression inbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Revisiting the Multifaceted Roles of Bacteriocins : The Multifaceted Roles of Bacteriocins.Microbial ecology · 2024Review
- Deep learning neural network development for the classification of bacteriocin sequences produced by lactic acid bacteria.F1000Research · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
A key property of many antibiotics is that they will kill or inhibit a diverse range of microbial species. This broad-spectrum of activity has its evolutionary roots in ecological competition, whereby bacteria and other microbes use antibiotics to suppress other strains and species. However, many bacteria also use narrow-spectrum toxins, such as bacteriocins, that principally target conspecifics. Why has such a diversity in spectrum evolved? Here, we develop an evolutionary model to understand antimicrobial spectrum. Our first model recapitulates the intuition that broad-spectrum is best, because it enables a microbe to kill a wider diversity of competitors. However, this model neglects an important property of antimicrobials: They are commonly bound, sequestered, or degraded by the cells they target. Incorporating this toxin loss reveals a major advantage to narrow-spectrum toxins: They target the strongest ecological competitor and avoid being used up on less important species. Why then would broad-spectrum toxins ever evolve? Our model predicts that broad-spectrum toxins will be favored by natural selection if a strain is highly abundant and can overpower both its key competitor and other species. We test this prediction by compiling and analyzing a database of the regulation and spectrum of toxins used in inter-bacterial competition. This analysis reveals a strong association between broad-spectrum toxins and density-dependent regulation, indicating that they are indeed used when strains are abundant. Our work provides a rationale for why bacteria commonly evolve narrow-spectrum toxins such as bacteriocins and suggests that the evolution of antibiotics proper is a signature of ecological dominance.
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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.