Experimental evolution of root-associated microbial communities
Kiel, N.; Wippel, K.; Garrido-Oter, R.
Show abstract
Microbial communities associated with plants are dynamic ecosystems whose structure and functions influence host health and fitness. While the ecological roles and beneficial function of plant microbiomes are increasingly well understood, the evolutionary dynamics that shape them over time remain unclear. Experimental evolution constitutes a powerful tool to study microbial adaptation, but so far, its application has been largely focused on free-living or single-species populations. Here, we use experimental evolution to test whether taxonomically complex synthetic bacterial communities can adapt to novel plant hosts. We show that replicate microbial communities undergo rapid and parallel genomic evolution, with measurable gains in colonization fitness. Adaptive changes involved mutations in regulatory processes, motility, and core metabolism, leading to significant fitness gains across diverse taxa. Our findings demonstrate that the plant host can drive microbiome evolution without disrupting the stability of the root microbiota.
Matching journals
The top 3 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.
Similar papers in this journal
- Horizontally transmitted symbiont populations in deep-sea mussels are genetically isolated 96%
- The enemy from within: a prophage of Roseburia intestinalis systematically turns lytic in the mouse gut, driving bacterial adaptation by CRISPR spacer acquisition 95%
- Microbial invasion of a toxic medium is facilitated by a resident community but inhibited as the community co-evolves 95%
Similar papers in this journal
- Integrating theory and machine learning to reveal determinants of plasmid copy number 96%
- Community composition of microbial microcosms follows simple assembly rules at evolutionary timescales 95%
- Systematic evaluation of metatranscriptomic differential gene expression in silico, in vitro, and in vivo enables elucidation of inter-species cross-feeding 95%
Similar papers in this journal
- Evolution uncovers a general tradeoff between recovery after heat shock and growth at elevated temperatures 96%
- Genomic features predict bacterial life history strategies in soil, as identified by metagenomic stable isotope probing 94%
- Ecological Stability Emerges at the Level of Strains in the Human Gut Microbiome 94%
Similar papers in this journal
"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.