Long-term social dynamics drive loss of function in pathogenic bacteria.

ABSTRACT: Laboratory experiments show that social interactions between bacterial cells can drive evolutionary change at the population level, but significant challenges limit attempts to assess the relevance of these findings to natural populations, where selection pressures are unknown. We have increasingly sophisticated methods for monitoring phenotypic and genotypic dynamics in bacteria causing infectious disease, but in contrast, we lack evidence-based adaptive explanations for those changes. Evolutionary change during infection is often interpreted as host adaptation, but this assumption neglects to consider social dynamics shown to drive evolutionary change in vitro. We provide evidence to show that long-term behavioral dynamics observed in a pathogen are driven by selection to outcompete neig

SUBMITTER: Andersen SB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4553784 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature