Ecological and Evolutionary Science
Research Article | Ecological and Evolutionary ScienceFitness Cost of Aflatoxin Production in Aspergillus flavus When Competing with Soil Microbes Could Maintain Balancing SelectionAflatoxin, produced by the fungus Aspergillus flavus, is an extremely potent hepatotoxin that causes acute toxicosis and cancer, and it incurs hundreds of millions of dollars annually in agricultural losses. Despite the importance of this toxin to humans, it has remained unclear what the fungus gains by producing aflatoxin. In fact, not all strains of...
Research Article | Ecological and Evolutionary ScienceEvolutionary Model of Cluster Divergence of the Emergent Marine Pathogen Vibrio vulnificus: From Genotype to EcotypeVibrio vulnificus is an emergent marine pathogen and is the cause of a deadly septicemia. However, the genetic factors that differentiate its clinical and environmental strains and its several biotypes remain mostly enigmatic. In this work, we investigated the underlying genomic properties and population dynamics of the...
Research Article | Ecological and Evolutionary ScienceLong-Term Transcriptional Activity at Zero Growth of a Cosmopolitan Rare Biosphere MemberThe microbial rare biosphere represents the largest pool of biodiversity on Earth and constitutes, in sum of all its members, a considerable part of a habitat’s biomass. Dormancy or starvation is typically used to explain the persistence of low-abundance microorganisms in the environment. We show that a low-abundance microorganism can be highly transcriptionally active while remaining in a zero-growth state for at least 7 weeks. Our...
Research Article | Ecological and Evolutionary ScienceCompetition in Biofilms between Cystic Fibrosis Isolates of Pseudomonas aeruginosa Is Shaped by R-PyocinsA major clinical problem caused by Pseudomonas aeruginosa, is chronic biofilm infection of the lungs in individuals with cystic fibrosis (CF). Epidemic P. aeruginosa strains dominate and displace others during CF infection, but these intraspecies interactions remain poorly understood. Here we...
Research Article | Ecological and Evolutionary ScienceSimulating Multilevel Dynamics of Antimicrobial Resistance in a Membrane Computing ModelThe work that we present here represents the culmination of many years of investigation in looking for a suitable methodology to simulate the multihierarchical processes involved in antibiotic resistance. Everything started with our early appreciation of the different independent but embedded biological units that shape the biology, ecology, and evolution of antibiotic-resistant microorganisms. Genes, plasmids carrying these genes,...
Research Article | Ecological and Evolutionary ScienceImpact of Homologous Recombination on the Evolution of Prokaryotic Core GenomesMicrobial populations exchange genetic material through a process called homologous recombination. Although this process has been studied in particular organisms, we lack an understanding of its differential impact over the genome and across microbes with different life-styles. We used a common analytical framework to assess this process in a representative set of microorganisms. Our results uncovered important trends. First, microbes...
Research Article | Ecological and Evolutionary ScienceTrophic Specialization Results in Genomic Reduction in Free-Living Marine Idiomarina BacteriaThe streamlining hypothesis is usually used to explain the genomic reduction events in free-living bacteria like SAR11. However, we find that the genomic reduction phenomenon in the bacterial genus Idiomarina is different from that in SAR11. Therefore, we propose a new hypothesis to explain genomic reduction in this genus based on trophic specialization that could result in genomic reduction, which would be not uncommon in...
Editor's Pick Research Article | Ecological and Evolutionary ScienceThe Transcriptional Cycle Is Suited to Daytime N2 Fixation in the Unicellular Cyanobacterium “Candidatus Atelocyanobacterium thalassa” (UCYN-A)The symbiotic N2-fixing cyanobacterium UCYN-A, which is closely related to Braarudosphaera bigelowii, and its eukaryotic algal host have been shown to be globally distributed and important in open-ocean N2 fixation. These unique cyanobacteria have reduced metabolic capabilities, even lacking genes for oxygenic photosynthesis and carbon fixation....
Research Article | Ecological and Evolutionary ScienceSalmonella enterica Phylogeny Based on Whole-Genome Sequencing Reveals Two New Clades and Novel Patterns of Horizontally Acquired Genetic ElementsRapid improvements in nucleotide sequencing access and affordability have led to a drastic increase in availability of genetic information. This information will improve the accuracy of molecular descriptions, including serovars, within S. enterica. Although the concept of serovars continues to be useful, it may have more significant limitations than previously...
Research Article | Ecological and Evolutionary ScienceOrigins and Evolution of the Global RNA ViromeThe majority of the diverse viruses infecting eukaryotes have RNA genomes, including numerous human, animal, and plant pathogens. Recent advances of metagenomics have led to the discovery of many new groups of RNA viruses in a wide range of hosts. These findings enable a far more complete reconstruction of the evolution of RNA viruses than was attainable previously. This reconstruction reveals the relationships between different...