Polygenic Adaptation and Clonal Interference Enable Sustained Diversity in Experimental Pseudomonas aeruginosa Populations.

ABSTRACT: How biodiversity arises and can be maintained in asexual microbial populations growing on a single resource remains unclear. Many models presume that beneficial genotypes will outgrow others and purge variation via selective sweeps. Environmental structure like that found in biofilms, which are associated with persistence during infection and other stressful conditions, may oppose this process and preserve variation. We tested this hypothesis by evolving Pseudomonas aeruginosa populations in biofilm-promoting arginine media for 3 months, using both a bead model of the biofilm life cycle and planktonic serial transfer. Surprisingly, adaptation and diversification were mostly uninterrupted by fixation events that eliminate diversity, with hundreds of mutations maintained at intermediate freq

SUBMITTER: Harris KB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8662654 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature