virulence and pathogen multiplication a serial passage experiment in the hypervirulent bacterial insect-pathogen xenorhabdus nematophila毒性和病原体乘法串行通道实验hypervirulent细菌insect-pathogen xenorhabdus nematophila.pdfVIP

Virulence and Pathogen Multiplication: A Serial Passage Experiment in the Hypervirulent Bacterial Insect- Pathogen Xenorhabdus nematophila ´ 1 ` 2 1 2 3 Elodie Chapuis , Sylvie Pages , Vanya Emelianoff , Alain Givaudan , Jean-Baptiste Ferdy * ´ 1The Center for Biology and Management of Populations, Montpellier, France, 2 Laboratoire EMIP, UMR INRA UM2 1133, Universite Montpellier 2, Montpellier, France, ´ ´ ´ 3 Laboratoire Evolution et Diversite Biologique UMR CNRS UPS 5174, Universite Toulouse 3, Toulouse, France Abstract The trade-off hypothesis proposes that the evolution of pathogens’ virulence is shaped by a link between virulence and contagiousness. This link is often assumed to come from the fact that pathogens are contagious only if they can reach high parasitic load in the infected host. In this paper we present an experimental test of the hypothesis that selection on fast replication can affect virulence. In a serial passage experiment, we selected 80 lines of the bacterial insect-pathogen Xenorhabdus nematophila to multiply fast in an artificial culture medium. This selection resulted in shortened lag phase in our selected bacteria. We then injected these bacteria into insects and observed an increase in virulence. This could be taken as a sign that virulence in Xenorhabdus is linked to fast multiplication. But we found, among the selected lineages, either no link or a positive correlation between lag duration and virulence: the most virulent bacteria were the last to start multiplyin