Plasmid fitness costs are caused by specific genetic conflicts enabling resolution by compensatory mutation.

ABSTRACT: Plasmids play an important role in bacterial genome evolution by transferring genes between lineages. Fitness costs associated with plasmid carriage are expected to be a barrier to gene exchange, but the causes of plasmid fitness costs are poorly understood. Single compensatory mutations are often sufficient to completely ameliorate plasmid fitness costs, suggesting that such costs are caused by specific genetic conflicts rather than generic properties of plasmids, such as their size, metabolic burden, or gene expression level. By combining the results of experimental evolution with genetics and transcriptomics, we show here that fitness costs of 2 divergent large plasmids in Pseudomonas fluorescens are caused by inducing maladaptive expression of a chromosomal tailocin toxin operon. Mutat

SUBMITTER: Hall JPJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8544851 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature