Fitness benefits to bacteria of carrying prophages and prophage-encoded antibiotic-resistance genes peak in different environments.

ABSTRACT: Understanding the role of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) in adaptation is a key challenge in evolutionary biology. In microbes, an important mechanism of HGT is prophage acquisition (phage genomes integrated into bacterial chromosomes). Prophages can influence bacterial fitness via the transfer of beneficial genes (including antibiotic-resistance genes, ARGs), protection from superinfecting phages, or switching to a lytic lifecycle that releases free phages infectious to competitors. We expect these effects to depend on environmental conditions because of, for example, environment-dependent induction of the lytic lifecycle. However, it remains unclear how costs/benefits of prophages vary across environments. Here, studying prophages with/without ARGs in Escherichia coli, we disentangled th

SUBMITTER: Wendling CC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7986917 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature