Bacterial warfare is associated with virulence and antimicrobial resistance
Sharp, C.; Foster, K. R.
Show abstract
Bacteria have evolved a diverse array of mechanisms to inhibit and kill competitors, commonly known as bacterial weapons. However, why some bacteria carry weapons while others do not remains poorly understood. Here we explore this question using the bacteriocins of E. coli as a model system, which are both well studied and have large well-annotated genomic resources. While bacteriocins are found widely across E. coli strains, we find that carriage is particularly associated with pathogenic extra-intestinal (ExPEC) strains, including many clinically-important pandemic strains. These pathogenic strains commonly carry large plasmids that encode the bacteriocins but also virulence factors, including siderophores, and antimicrobial resistance mechanisms. Across all E. coli strains, we find many orphan immunity proteins, which protect against bacteriocins and suggest that bacterial warfare is important in nature. We also present evidence that bacteriocin toxins readily move between strains via plasmid transfer and even between plasmids via transposons. Finally, we show that several E. coli bacteriocins are widely shared with the pathogen Salmonella enterica, further cementing the link to virulence. Our work suggests that the bacteriocins of E. coli are important antibacterial weapons for dangerous antimicrobial-resistant strains.
Matching journals
The top 10 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.
Similar papers in this journal
- Host ecology regulates interspecies recombination in bacteria of the genus Campylobacter 95%
- The role of interspecies recombinations in the evolution of antibiotic resistant pneumococci 95%
- Comprehensive analysis of horizontal gene transfer among multidrug-resistant bacterial pathogens in a single hospital 94%
Similar papers in this journal
Similar papers in this journal
- Phage-plasmids spread antibiotic resistance genes through infection and lysogenic conversion 94%
- Adaptation to overflow metabolism by mutations that impair tRNA modification in experimentally evolved bacteria 93%
- Genomic surveillance of vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium reveals spread of a linear plasmid conferring a nutrient utilization advantage 93%
Similar papers in this journal
- Intragenomic conflicts with plasmids and chromosomal mobile genetic elements drive the evolution of natural transformation within species 96%
- High-throughput mapping of the phage resistance landscape in E. coli 94%
- CRISPR-Cas is beneficial in plasmid competition, but limited by competitor toxin-antitoxin activity when horizontally transferred 93%
Similar papers in this journal
- Multilayer Networks of Plasmid Genetic Similarity Reveal Potential Pathways of Gene Transmission 95%
- The ecological relevance of flagellar motility in soil bacterial communities 94%
- Clinical extended-spectrum beta-lactamase antibiotic resistance plasmids have diverse transfer rates and can spread in the absence of antibiotic selection 94%
"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.