Trade-offs predicted by metabolic network structure give rise to evolutionary specialization and phenotypic diversification.

ABSTRACT: Mitigating trade-offs between different resource-utilization functions is key to an organism's ecological and evolutionary success. These trade-offs often reflect metabolic constraints with a complex molecular underpinning; therefore, their consequences for evolutionary processes have remained elusive. Here, we investigate how metabolic architecture induces resource utilization constraints and how these constraints, in turn, elicit evolutionary specialization and diversification. Guided by the metabolic network structure of the bacterium Lactococcus cremoris, we selected two carbon sources (fructose and galactose) with predicted co-utilization constraints. By evolving L. cremoris on either fructose, galactose or a mix of both sugars, we imposed selection favoring divergent metabolic specia

SUBMITTER: Ekkers DM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9206417 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature