Optimal Strategy for Competence Differentiation in Bacteria 英文参考文献.docVIP

OptimalStrategyforCompetenceDifferentiationin Bacteria C.ScottWylie1¤*,AaronD.Trout2,DavidA.Kessler3,HerbertLevine1 1Center For Theoretical Biological Physics, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America, 2Department of Mathematics, Chatham University,Pittsburgh,Pennsylvania,UnitedStatesofAmerica,3DepartmentofPhysics,Bar-IlanUniversity,Ramat-Gan,Israel Abstract AphylogeneticallydiversesubsetofbacterialspeciesarenaturallycompetentfortransformationbyDNA.Transformation entails recombination of genes between different lineages, representing a form of bacterial sex that increases standing genetic variation. We first assess whether homologous recombination by transformation is favored by evolution. Using stochastic population genetic computer simulations in which beneficial and deleterious mutations occur at many loci throughout the whole genome, we find that transformation can increase both the rate of adaptive evolution and the equilibrium level of fitness. Secondly, motivated by experimental observations of Bacillus subtilis, we assume that competenceadditionallyentailsaweakpersisterphenotype,i.e.,theratesofbirthanddeatharereducedforthesecells. Consequently,persistersevolvemoreslowlythannon-persisters.Weshowviasimulationthatstrainswhichstochastically switch into and out of the competent phenotype are evolutionarily favored over strains that express only a single phenotype.Ourmodel’ssimplicityenablesustoderiveandnumericallysolveasystemoffinite-N deterministicequations that describe the evolutionary dynamics. The observed tradeoff between the benefit of recombination and the cost of persistence may explain the previously mysterious observation that only a fractional subpopulation of B. subtilis cells expresscompetence.Moregenerally,thisworkdemonstratesthatpopulationgeneticforcescangiverisetophenotypic diversityeveninanunchangingandhomogeneousenvironment. Citation:WylieCS,TroutAD,KesslerDA,LevineH(2010)OptimalStrategyforCom