Bacterial cell-to-cell signaling promotes the evolution of resistance to parasitic bacteriophages.

ABSTRACT: The evolution of host-parasite interactions could be affected by intraspecies variation between different host and parasite genotypes. Here we studied how bacterial host cell-to-cell signaling affects the interaction with parasites using two bacteria-specific viruses (bacteriophages) and the host bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa that communicates by secreting and responding to quorum sensing (QS) signal molecules. We found that a QS-signaling proficient strain was able to evolve higher levels of resistance to phages during a short-term selection experiment. This was unlikely driven by demographic effects (mutation supply and encounter rates), as nonsignaling strains reached higher population densities in the absence of phages in our selective environment. Instead, the evolved nonsig

SUBMITTER: Moreau P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5355186 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature