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Bacterial cell-to-cell signaling promotes the evolution of resistance to parasitic bacteriophages

Moreau, Pierre; Diggle, Stephen P.; Friman, Ville-Petri

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Authors

Pierre Moreau

Stephen P. Diggle

Ville-Petri Friman



Abstract

The evolution of host–parasite interactions could be affected by intraspecies variation between different host and parasite genotypes. Here we studied how bacterial host cell-to-cell signaling affects the interaction with parasites using two bacteria-specific viruses (bacteriophages) and the host bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa that com- municates by secreting and responding to quorum sensing (QS) signal molecules. We found that a QS-signaling proficient strain was able to evolve higher levels of resist- ance to phages during a short-term selection experiment. This was unlikely driven by demographic effects (mutation supply and encounter rates), as nonsignaling strains reached higher population densities in the absence of phages in our selective environ- ment. Instead, the evolved nonsignaling strains suffered relatively higher growth re- duction in the absence of the phage, which could have constrained the phage resistance evolution. Complementation experiments with synthetic signal molecules showed that the Pseudomonas quinolone signal (PQS) improved the growth of nonsignaling bacteria in the presence of a phage, while the activation of las and rhl quorum sensing systems had no effect. Together, these results suggest that QS-signaling can promote the evo- lution of phage resistance and that the loss of QS-signaling could be costly in the pres- ence of phages. Phage–bacteria interactions could therefore indirectly shape the evolution of intraspecies social interactions and PQS-mediated virulence in P. aeruginosa.

Citation

Moreau, P., Diggle, S. P., & Friman, V. (2017). Bacterial cell-to-cell signaling promotes the evolution of resistance to parasitic bacteriophages. Ecology and Evolution, 7(6), https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.2818

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jan 28, 2017
Online Publication Date Feb 21, 2017
Publication Date Mar 16, 2017
Deposit Date Mar 21, 2017
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Ecology and Evolution
Electronic ISSN 2045-7758
Publisher Wiley
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 7
Issue 6
DOI https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.2818
Keywords Bacteriophage, Coevolution, Evolution, Parasitism, Quorum sensing, Resistance
Public URL https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/851232
Publisher URL http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.2818/abstract;jsessionid=F4BDDB90C3B1FBF67BC6F5169E5D0471.f02t01

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