Trusting the hand that feeds: microbes evolve to anticipate a serial transfer protocol as individuals or collectives.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Experimental evolution of microbes often involves a serial transfer protocol, where microbes are repeatedly diluted by transfer to a fresh medium, starting a new growth cycle. This has revealed that evolution can be remarkably reproducible, where microbes show parallel adaptations both on the level of the phenotype as well as the genotype. However, these studies also reveal a strong potential for divergent evolution, leading to diversity both between and within replicate populations. We here study how in silico evolved Virtual Microbe "wild types" (WTs) adapt to a serial transfer protocol to investigate generic evolutionary adaptations, and how these adaptations can be manifested by a variety of different mechanisms. RESULTS:We show that all WTs evolve to anticipate the regulari

SUBMITTER: van Dijk B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6829849 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature