Search results for "Microbial Evolution"
showing 10 items of 28 documents
Impact of vector dispersal and host-plant fidelity on the dissemination of an emerging plant pathogen
2012
International audience; Dissemination of vector-transmitted pathogens depend on the survival and dispersal of the vector and the vector's ability to transmit the pathogen, while the host range of vector and pathogen determine the breath of transmission possibilities. In this study, we address how the interaction between dispersal and plant fidelities of a pathogen (stolbur phytoplasma tuf-a) and its vector (Hyalesthes obsoletus: Cixiidae) affect the emergence of the pathogen. Using genetic markers, we analysed the geographic origin and range expansion of both organisms in Western Europe and, specifically, whether the pathogen's dissemination in the northern range is caused by resident vecto…
Genome sequence of the pea aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum
2010
The genome of the pea aphid shows remarkable levels of gene duplication and equally remarkable gene absences that shed light on aspects of aphid biology, most especially its symbiosis with Buchnera.
Detection and Characterization of Wolbachia Infections in Natural Populations of Aphids: Is the Hidden Diversity Fully Unraveled?
2011
Copyright © 2011 Augustinos et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Aphids are a serious threat to agriculture, despite being a rather small group of insects. The about 4,000 species worldwide engage in highly interesting and complex relationships with their microbial fauna. One of the key symbionts in arthropods is Wolbachia, an a-Proteobacterium implicated in many important biological processes and believed to be a potential tool for biological control. Aphids were thought not to harbour W…
Predation on Multiple Trophic Levels Shapes the Evolution of Pathogen Virulence
2009
The pathogen virulence is traditionally thought to co-evolve as a result of reciprocal selection with its host organism. In natural communities, pathogens and hosts are typically embedded within a web of interactions with other species, which could affect indirectly the pathogen virulence and host immunity through trade-offs. Here we show that selection by predation can affect both pathogen virulence and host immune defence. Exposing opportunistic bacterial pathogen Serratia marcescens to predation by protozoan Tetrahymena thermophila decreased its virulence when measured as host moth Parasemia plantaginis survival. This was probably because the bacterial anti-predatory traits were traded o…
Corrigendum: Phylogeny of Vibrio vulnificus From the Analysis of the Core-Genome: Implications for Intra-Species Taxonomy
2018
Vibrio vulnificus (Vv) is a multi-host pathogenic species currently subdivided into three biotypes (Bts). The three Bts are human-pathogens, but only Bt2 is also a fish-pathogen, an ability that is conferred by a transferable virulence-plasmid (pVvbt2). Here we present a phylogenomic analysis from the core genome of 80 Vv strains belonging to the three Bts recovered from a wide range of geographical and ecological sources. We have identified five well-supported phylogenetic groups or lineages (L). LI comprises a mixture of clinical and environmental Bt1 strains, most of them involved in human clinical cases related to raw seafood ingestion. LII is linked to the aquaculture industry and incl…
The role of spatial structure in the evolution of viral innate immunity evasion: A diffusion-reaction cellular automaton model
2020
Most viruses have evolved strategies for preventing interferon (IFN) secretion and evading innate immunity. Recent work has shown that viral shutdown of IFN secretion can be viewed as a social trait, since the ability of a given virus to evade IFN-mediated immunity depends on the phenotype of neighbor viruses. Following this idea, we investigate the role of spatial structure in the evolution of innate immunity evasion. For this, we model IFN signaling and viral spread using a spatially explicit approximation that combines a diffusion-reaction model and cellular automaton. Our results indicate that the benefits of preventing IFN secretion for a virus are strongly determined by spatial struct…
Evolutionary convergence and nitrogen metabolism in Blattabacterium strain Bge, primary endosymbiont of the cockroach Blattella germanica.
2009
Bacterial endosymbionts of insects play a central role in upgrading the diet of their hosts. In certain cases, such as aphids and tsetse flies, endosymbionts complement the metabolic capacity of hosts living on nutrient-deficient diets, while the bacteria harbored by omnivorous carpenter ants are involved in nitrogen recycling. In this study, we describe the genome sequence and inferred metabolism of Blattabacterium strain Bge, the primary Flavobacteria endosymbiont of the omnivorous German cockroach Blattella germanica. Through comparative genomics with other insect endosymbionts and free-living Flavobacteria we reveal that Blattabacterium strain Bge shares the same distribution of functio…
The Fitness Effects of Random Mutations in Single-Stranded DNA and RNA Bacteriophages
2009
Mutational fitness effects can be measured with relatively high accuracy in viruses due to their small genome size, which facilitates full-length sequencing and genetic manipulation. Previous work has shown that animal and plant RNA viruses are very sensitive to mutation. Here, we characterize mutational fitness effects in single-stranded (ss) DNA and ssRNA bacterial viruses. First, we performed a mutation-accumulation experiment in which we subjected three ssDNA (ΦX174, G4, F1) and three ssRNA phages (Qβ, MS2, and SP) to plaque-to-plaque transfers and chemical mutagenesis. Genome sequencing and growth assays indicated that the average fitness effect of the accumulated mutations was similar…
Experimental evolution of an oncolytic vesicular stomatitis virus with increased selectivity for p53-deficient cells
2014
Experimental evolution has been used for various biotechnological applications including protein and microbial cell engineering, but less commonly in the field of oncolytic virotherapy. Here, we sought to adapt a rapidly evolving RNA virus to cells deficient for the tumor suppressor gene p53, a hallmark of cancer cells. To achieve this goal, we established four independent evolution lines of the vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) in p53-knockout mouse embryonic fibroblasts (p53-/- MEFs) under conditions favoring the action of natural selection. We found that some evolved viruses showed increased fitness and cytotoxicity in p53-/- cells but not in isogenic p53+/+ cells, indicating gene-specifi…
High temperature and bacteriophages can indirectly select for bacterial pathogenicity in environmental reservoirs
2010
The coincidental evolution hypothesis predicts that traits connected to bacterial pathogenicity could be indirectly selected outside the host as a correlated response to abiotic environmental conditions or different biotic species interactions. To investigate this, an opportunistic bacterial pathogen, Serratia marcescens, was cultured in the absence and presence of the lytic bacteriophage PPV (Podoviridae) at 25°C and 37°C for four weeks (N = 5). At the end, we measured changes in bacterial phage-resistance and potential virulence traits, and determined the pathogenicity of all bacterial selection lines in the Parasemia plantaginis insect model in vivo. Selection at 37°C increased bacterial…