The impact of natural transformation on adaptation in spatially structured bacterial populations.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Recent studies have demonstrated that natural transformation and the formation of highly structured populations in bacteria are interconnected. In spite of growing evidence about this connection, little is known about the dynamics of natural transformation in spatially structured bacterial populations.

Results

In this work, we model the interdependency between the dynamics of the bacterial gene pool and those of environmental DNA in space to dissect the effect of transformation on adaptation. Our model reveals that even with only a single locus under consideration, transformation with a free DNA fragment pool results in complex adaptation dynamics that do not emerge in previous models focusing only on the gene shuffling effect of transformation at multiple loci. W

SUBMITTER: Moradigaravand D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4080760 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature