Tradeoff between lag time and growth rate drives the plasmid acquisition cost
| Author(s) | Ahmad, Mehrose | |
| Author(s) | Prensky, Hannah | |
| Author(s) | Balestrieri, Jacqueline | |
| Author(s) | ElNaggar, Shahd | |
| Author(s) | Gomez-Simmonds, Angela | |
| Author(s) | Uhlemann, Anne-Catrin | |
| Author(s) | Traxler, Beth | |
| Author(s) | Singh, Abhyudai | |
| Author(s) | Lopatkin, Allison J. | |
| Date Accessioned | 2023-07-19T18:42:28Z | |
| Date Available | 2023-07-19T18:42:28Z | |
| Publication Date | 2023-04-24 | |
| Description | This article was originally published in Nature Communications. The version of record is available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-38022-6. © The Author(s) 2023 | |
| Abstract | Conjugative plasmids drive genetic diversity and evolution in microbial populations. Despite their prevalence, plasmids can impose long-term fitness costs on their hosts, altering population structure, growth dynamics, and evolutionary outcomes. In addition to long-term fitness costs, acquiring a new plasmid introduces an immediate, short-term perturbation to the cell. However, due to the transient nature of this plasmid acquisition cost, a quantitative understanding of its physiological manifestations, overall magnitudes, and population-level implications, remains unclear. To address this, here we track growth of single colonies immediately following plasmid acquisition. We find that plasmid acquisition costs are primarily driven by changes in lag time, rather than growth rate, for nearly 60 conditions covering diverse plasmids, selection environments, and clinical strains/species. Surprisingly, for a costly plasmid, clones exhibiting longer lag times also achieve faster recovery growth rates, suggesting an evolutionary tradeoff. Modeling and experiments demonstrate that this tradeoff leads to counterintuitive ecological dynamics, whereby intermediate-cost plasmids outcompete both their low and high-cost counterparts. These results suggest that, unlike fitness costs, plasmid acquisition dynamics are not uniformly driven by minimizing growth disadvantages. Moreover, a lag/growth tradeoff has clear implications in predicting the ecological outcomes and intervention strategies of bacteria undergoing conjugation. | |
| Sponsor | We thank I. Gordo, D. Mazel, F. Dionisio, J. Alves Gama, E. Top, and M. Bruckner for their generous gifts (See Supplementary Methods). We also thank Maya Fabozzi from the Lopatkin Lab for generating the rifampicin-resistant mutant of the BW25113 strain. This study was funded by the National Science Foundation award #2040697 (A.J.L.) and the National Institute of Health awards #1R15GM143694-01 (A.J.L.) and #R01AI150152 (B.T.). | |
| Citation | Ahmad, M., Prensky, H., Balestrieri, J. et al. Tradeoff between lag time and growth rate drives the plasmid acquisition cost. Nat Commun 14, 2343 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-38022-6 | |
| ISSN | 2041-1723 | |
| URL | https://udspace.udel.edu/handle/19716/33023 | |
| Language | en_US | |
| Publisher | Nature Communications | |
| dc.rights.uri | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ | |
| Keywords | microbial communities | |
| Keywords | population dynamics | |
| Title | Tradeoff between lag time and growth rate drives the plasmid acquisition cost | |
| Type | Article |
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