ArticlePLoS biology2022
Horizontal gene transfer and ecological interactions jointly control microbiome stability.
Article in PLoS biology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 38 papers.
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Who cites it
38 citing papers in PubMed, 53 citations in OpenAlex.
- Systems engineering of engineered live biotherapeutics: A discovery-to-translation framework for streamlining microbiome therapeutic development.Journal of controlled release : official journal of the Controlled Release Society · 2026Review
- Niche Construction: A Rational Engineering Strategy for Regulating Microbial Assembly to Enhance Flavor and Bioactivity of Fermented Foods.Comprehensive reviews in food science and food safety · 2026Review
- Amelioration Effects ofPlants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Optimized Organic Fertilization Mitigates Antibiotic Resistance Gene Dissemination in Manure-Amended Soils: A Field Study on Nutrient-Microbiome-Antibiotic Resistance Gene Nexus During Cabbage Reproductive Cycle.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Perturbations shift the composition of bacterial DNA carried by virus-like particles in the murine gut microbiome.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Modelling the role of the microbiome in antimicrobial resistance across scales.Nature microbiology · 2026Review
- Using auxotrophic donor strains to explore pQBR57 plasmid host range among environmental soil bacterial isolates.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2026Article
- Bacterial inoculation drives microbiome-mediated resistance to a soil-borne pathogen in wheat.NPJ biofilms and microbiomes · 2026Article
- Low initial metabolite production enhances stability in syntrophic bacterial consortia.Communications biology · 2026Article
- The interplay between ecological networks drives host-plasmid community dynamics.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Assessing the Ecological Roles of Resistomes within Microbial Communities in Antibiotic-contaminated Ecosystems.Microbial ecology · 2026Review
- Effects of intraspecies and interspecies competition on genetic device construction and performance.mSphere · 2026Article
- Coccidiosis prevention strategies shape the microbiome, resistome and mobilome composition in the broiler gut.Animal microbiome · 2026Article
- Phage-microbe interactions may contribute to the population structure and dynamics of hydrothermal vent symbionts.ISME communications · 2026Article
- The microbiome-gerogene axis: a new frontier in precision geromedicine.Frontiers in aging · 2026Review
- Hurdles to horizontal gene transfer: species-specific effects of synonymous variation and plasmid copy number determine antibiotic resistance phenotype.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2026Article
- Longitudinal gut microbiota tracking reveals the dynamics of horizontal gene transfer.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Horizontal gene transfer, segregation loss, and the speed of microbial adaptation.Evolution letters · 2025Article
- Exploring genetic adaptation and microbial dynamics in engineered anaerobic ecosystems via strain-level metagenomics.Cell genomics · 2025Article
- Intraspecies warfare restricts strain coexistence in human skin microbiomes.Nature microbiology · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Genes encoding resistance to stressors, such as antibiotics or environmental pollutants, are widespread across microbiomes, often encoded on mobile genetic elements. Yet, despite their prevalence, the impact of resistance genes and their mobility upon the dynamics of microbial communities remains largely unknown. Here we develop eco-evolutionary theory to explore how resistance genes alter the stability of diverse microbiomes in response to stressors. We show that adding resistance genes to a microbiome typically increases its overall stability, particularly for genes on mobile genetic elements with high transfer rates that efficiently spread resistance throughout the community. However, the impact of resistance genes upon the stability of individual taxa varies dramatically depending upon the identity of individual taxa, the mobility of the resistance gene, and the network of ecological interactions within the community. Nonmobile resistance genes can benefit susceptible taxa in cooperative communities yet damage those in competitive communities. Moreover, while the transfer of mobile resistance genes generally increases the stability of previously susceptible recipient taxa to perturbation, it can decrease the stability of the originally resistant donor taxon. We confirmed key theoretical predictions experimentally using competitive soil microcosm communities. Here the stability of a susceptible microbial community to perturbation was increased by adding mobile resistance genes encoded on conjugative plasmids but was decreased when these same genes were encoded on the chromosome. Together, these findings highlight the importance of the interplay between ecological interactions and horizontal gene transfer in driving the eco-evolutionary dynamics of diverse microbiomes.
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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.