A Selective Bottleneck During Host Entry Drives the Evolution of New Legume Symbionts.

ABSTRACT: During the emergence of new host-microbe symbioses, microbial fitness results from the ability to complete the different steps of symbiotic life cycles, where each step imposes specific selective pressures. However, the relative contribution of these different selective pressures to the adaptive trajectories of microbial symbionts is still poorly known. Here, we characterized the dynamics of phenotypic adaptation to a simplified symbiotic life cycle during the experimental evolution of a plant pathogenic bacterium into a legume symbiont. We observed that fast adaptation was predominantly explained by improved competitiveness for host entry, which outweighed adaptation to within-host proliferation. Whole-population sequencing of bacteria at regular time intervals along this evolution experi

SUBMITTER: Doin de Moura GG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10220510 | biostudies-literature | 2023 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature