RT Journal Article
T1 Rapid evolutionary turnover of mobile genetic elements drives bacterial resistance to phages
A1 Hussain, Fatima Aysha
A1 Dubert Pérez, Javier
A1 Elsherbini, Joseph
A1 Murphy, Mikayla
A1 VanInsberghe, David
A1 Arevalo, Philip
A1 Kauffman, Kathryn
A1 Rodino-Janeiro, Bruno Kotska
A1 Gavin, Hannah
A1 Gomez, Annika
A1 Lopatina, Anna
A1 Le Roux, Frédérique
A1 Polz, Martin F.
AB Although it is generally accepted that phages drive bacterial evolution, how these dynamics play out in the wild remains poorly understood. We found that susceptibility to viral killing in marine Vibrio is mediated by large and highly diverse mobile genetic elements. These phage defense elements display exceedingly fast evolutionary turnover, resulting in differential phage susceptibility among clonal bacterial strains while phage receptors remain invariant. Protection is cumulative, and a single bacterial genome can harbor 6 to 12 defense elements, accounting for more than 90% of the flexible genome among close relatives. The rapid turnover of these elements decouples phage resistance from other genomic features. Thus, resistance to phages in the wild follows evolutionary trajectories alternative to those predicted from laboratory-based evolutionary experiments.
PB American Association for the Advancement of Science
SN 1095-9203
YR 2021
FD 2021-10-22
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10347/38826
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10347/38826
LA eng
NO Simons Foundation (Life Sciences Project Award-572792) (M.F.P.); National Science Foundation Division of Ocean Sciences (OCE-1435868) (M.F.P.); MIT J-WAFS seed grant (M.F.P.); NSF GRFP (F.A.H.); MIT Martin Society of Fellows for Sustainability (F.A.H.); Xunta de Galicia Postdoctoral Fellowship (ED481B 2016/032) (J.D.); Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-16-CE32-0008-01) (F.L.R.); European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No 884988, Advanced ERC Dynamic) (F.L.R.).
DS Minerva
RD 30 abr 2026