Wrinkly-Spreader fitness in the two-dimensional agar plate microcosm: maladaptation, compensation and ecological success.

ABSTRACT: Bacterial adaptation to new environments often leads to the establishment of new genotypes with significantly altered phenotypes. In the Wrinkly Spreader (WS), ecological success in static liquid microcosms was through the rapid colonisation of the air-liquid interface by the production of a cellulose-based biofilm. Rapid surface spreading was also seen on agar plates, but in this two-dimensional environment the WS appears maladapted and rapidly reverts to the ancestral smooth (SM)-like colony genotype. In this work, the fitness of WS relative to SM in mixed colonies was found to be low, confirming the WS instability on agar plates. By examining defined WS mutants, the maladaptive characteristic was found to be the expression of cellulose. SM-like revertants had a higher growth rate than W

SUBMITTER: Spiers AJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1939736 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature