Slow growing bacteria survive bacteriophage in isolation.

ABSTRACT: The interactions between bacteria and bacteriophage have important roles in the global ecosystem; in turn changes in environmental parameters affect the interactions between bacteria and phage. However, there is a lack of knowledge on whether clonal bacterial populations harbour different phenotypes that respond to phage in distinct ways and whether the abundance of such phenotypes within bacterial populations is affected by variations in environmental parameters. Here we study the impact of variations in nutrient availability, bacterial growth rate and phage abundance on the interactions between the phage T4 and individual Escherichia coli cells confined in spatial refuges. Surprisingly, we found that fast growing bacteria survive together with all of their clonal kin cells, whereas slow

SUBMITTER: Attrill EL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10491631 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature