Skip to main content
bioRxiv
  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • ALERTS / RSS
Advanced Search
New Results

Unconstrained coevolution of bacterial size and the latent period of plastic phage

View ORCID ProfileJuan A. Bonachela, Melinda Choua, View ORCID ProfileMichael R. Heath
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.12.19.473366
Juan A. Bonachela
1Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Juan A. Bonachela
  • For correspondence: juan.bonachela@rutgers.edu
Melinda Choua
2Blue Remediation Ltd., Glasgow, Scotland, UK
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Michael R. Heath
3Marine Population Modelling Group, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Michael R. Heath
  • Abstract
  • Full Text
  • Info/History
  • Metrics
  • Preview PDF
Loading

Abstract

Viruses play critical roles in the dynamics of microbial communities. Lytic viruses, for example, kill significant proportions of autotrophic and heterotrophic microbes. The dynamic interplay between viruses and microbes results from an overlap of physiological, ecological, and evolutionary responses: environmental changes trigger host physiological changes, affecting the ecological interactions of host and virus and, ultimately, the evolutionary pressures influencing the two populations. Recent theoretical work studied how the dependence of viral traits on host physiology (viral plasticity) affects the evolutionarily stable host cell size and viral infection time emerging from coevolution. Here, we broaden the scope of the framework to consider any coevolutionary outcome, including potential evolutionary collapses of the system. We used the case study of Escherichia coli and T-like viruses under chemo-stat conditions, but the framework can be adapted to any microbe-virus system. Oligotrophic conditions led to smaller, lower-quality but more abundant hosts, and infections that were longer but produced a reduced viral offspring. Conversely, eutrophic conditions resulted in fewer but larger higher-quality hosts, and shorter but more productive infections. The virus influenced host evolution decreasing host radius more noticeably for low than for high dilution rates, and for high than for low nutrient input concentration. For low dilution rates, the emergent infection time minimized host need/use, but higher dilution led to an opportunistic strategy that shortened the duration of infections. System collapses driven by evolution resulted from host failure to adapt quickly enough to the evolving virus. Our results contribute to understanding the eco-evolutionary dynamics of microbes and virus, and to improving the predictability of current models for host-virus interactions. The large quantitative and qualitative differences observed with respect to a classic description (in which viral traits are assumed to be constant) highlights the importance of including viral plasticity in theories describing short- and long-term host-virus dynamics.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
Back to top
PreviousNext
Posted December 19, 2021.
Download PDF
Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about bioRxiv.

NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Unconstrained coevolution of bacterial size and the latent period of plastic phage
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from bioRxiv
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the bioRxiv website.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
Unconstrained coevolution of bacterial size and the latent period of plastic phage
Juan A. Bonachela, Melinda Choua, Michael R. Heath
bioRxiv 2021.12.19.473366; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.12.19.473366
Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo Google logo LinkedIn logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
Unconstrained coevolution of bacterial size and the latent period of plastic phage
Juan A. Bonachela, Melinda Choua, Michael R. Heath
bioRxiv 2021.12.19.473366; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.12.19.473366

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Subject Area

  • Microbiology
Subject Areas
All Articles
  • Animal Behavior and Cognition (4087)
  • Biochemistry (8762)
  • Bioengineering (6479)
  • Bioinformatics (23341)
  • Biophysics (11750)
  • Cancer Biology (9149)
  • Cell Biology (13248)
  • Clinical Trials (138)
  • Developmental Biology (7417)
  • Ecology (11369)
  • Epidemiology (2066)
  • Evolutionary Biology (15087)
  • Genetics (10399)
  • Genomics (14009)
  • Immunology (9121)
  • Microbiology (22040)
  • Molecular Biology (8779)
  • Neuroscience (47368)
  • Paleontology (350)
  • Pathology (1420)
  • Pharmacology and Toxicology (2482)
  • Physiology (3704)
  • Plant Biology (8050)
  • Scientific Communication and Education (1431)
  • Synthetic Biology (2208)
  • Systems Biology (6016)
  • Zoology (1249)