Spatial scales of competition and a growth–motility trade-off interact to determine bacterial coexistence

Kuhn, Thierry; Mamin, Marine; Bindschedler, Saskia; Bshary, Redouan; Estoppey, Aislinn; González, Diego; Palmieri, Fabio; Junier, Pilar; Richter, Xiang-Yi Li

doi:10.1098/rsos.211592

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…The complexity of both of these are a major hurdle in our ability to explain and predict the evolution of biological systems [41]. In this work, we characterized how the interplay between global and local regulators determines two phenotypes, motility and growth, which are bound by a trade-off [6][7][8][9]11]. We found that local regulators impact mostly the particular phenotype they are expected to control, swimming in this case, whereas global regulators are flexible in the way they couple phenotypic variations.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Global regulators facilitate adaptation to a phenotypic trade-off

Deyell,

Opuu,

Griffiths

et al. 2023

Preprint

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The fitness of organisms depends critically on regulatory strategies that balance multiple phenotypes, including physiological, developmental, and pathogenic. An important example is the trade-off between motility and growth determine competition for habitat colonization by microorganisms and the invasiveness of metastatic cells in cancer. Phenotype regulation relies on hierarchical gene networks, but how gene hierarchy contributes to adaptation remains unclear. Here, we show that global upstream regulators allow cells to adjust the impact of downstream local regulators in the context of a phenotypic trade-off. We performed single and double knockdowns of transcription factors in Escherichia Coli and measured their impact on swimming and growth in different environments. We observed that perturbations of local regulators affect only a specific phenotype independently of the genetic background, whereas perturbations of global regulators affect either one or both phenotypes to varying degrees depending on the genetic background. Global and local regulators strongly interact giving rise to sign, reciprocal sign and masking epistasis. Epistasis between particular genes is modulated by the environment, but only a restricted number of epistatic patterns are observed across environments. These epistatic constraints suggests that that local regulators should be typically acquired before tuning of the phenotypic trade-off by global regulators. These findings highlight the importance of pleiotropic regulators for coordinating phenotypic responses to complex environments and providing flexibility during evolution.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Disseminated tumour cells are highly mobile, which promotes metastasis, but have a slow-cycling state that makes radiation therapy and chemotherapies poorly effective [2][3][4][5]. In bacteria, the trade-off between mobility and growth underlies the maintenance of population diversity through niche formation [6][7][8][9][10].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global regulators facilitate adaptation to a phenotypic trade-off

Deyell,

Opuu,

Griffiths

et al. 2023

Preprint

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“…bacteria within positive interaction networks and those outside (Yang et al 2022). Different spatial scales also modulate the outcome of interactions between bacterial species, which may be intensely competitive at a very local scale but facilitate co-existence at the community level (Kuhn et al 2022).…”

Section: Productivity and Other Functionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The underground network: facilitation in soil bacteria

Jorna,

Adams,

Aanderud

et al. 2024

Oikos

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Our understanding of the fundamental role that soil bacteria play in the structure and functioning of Earth's ecosystems is ever expanding, but insight into the nature of interactions within these bacterial communities remains rudimentary. Bacterial facilitation may enhance the establishment, growth, and succession of eukaryotic biota, elevating the complexity and diversity of the entire soil community and thereby modulating multiple ecosystem functions. Global climate change often alters soil bacterial community composition, which, in turn, impacts other dependent biota. However, the impact of climate change on facilitation within bacterial communities remains poorly understood even though it may have important cascading consequences for entire ecosystems. The wealth of metagenomic data currently being generated gives community ecologists the ability to investigate bacterial facilitation in the natural world and how it affects ecological systems responses to climate change. Here, we review current evidence demonstrating the importance of facilitation in promoting emergent properties such as community diversity, ecosystem functioning, and resilience to climate change in soil bacterial communities. We show that a synthesis is currently missing between the abundant data, newly developed models and a coherent ecological framework that addresses these emergent properties. We highlight that including phylogenetic information, the physicochemical environment, and species‐specific ecologies can improve our ability to infer interactions in natural soil communities. Following these recommendations, studies on bacterial facilitation will be an important piece of the puzzle to understand the consequences of global change on ecological communities and a model to advance our understanding of facilitation in complex communities more generally.

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