Compensatory mutations reducing the fitness cost of plasmid carriage occur in plant rhizosphere communities.

ABSTRACT: Plasmids drive bacterial evolutionary innovation by transferring ecologically important functions between lineages, but acquiring a plasmid often comes at a fitness cost to the host cell. Compensatory mutations, which ameliorate the cost of plasmid carriage, promote plasmid maintenance in simplified laboratory media across diverse plasmid-host associations. Whether such compensatory evolution can occur in more complex communities inhabiting natural environmental niches where evolutionary paths may be more constrained is, however, unclear. Here, we show a substantial fitness cost of carrying the large conjugative plasmid pQBR103 in Pseudomonas fluorescens SBW25 in the plant rhizosphere. This plasmid fitness cost could be ameliorated by compensatory mutations affecting the chromosomal global

SUBMITTER: Bird SM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10062694 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature