Fitness and productivity increase with ecotypic diversity among E. coli coevolved in a simple, constant environment.

Fitness and productivity increase with ecotypic diversity among E. coli coevolved in a simple, constant environment. Appl Environ Microbiol. 2020 Feb 14;: Authors: Yang DD, Alexander A, Kinnersley M, Cook E, Caudy A, Rosebrock A, Rosenzweig F Abstract The productivity of a biological community often correlates with its diversity. In the microbial world this phenomenon can sometimes be explained by positive, density-dependent interactions such as cross-feeding and syntrophy. These metabolic interactions help account for the astonishing variety of microbial life, and drive many of the biogeochemical cycles without which life as we know it could not exist. While it is difficult to recapitulate experimentally how these interactions evolved among multiple taxa, we can explore in the laboratory how they arise within one. These experiments provide insight into how different bacterial ecotypes evolve and from these, possibly new 'species.' We have previously shown that in a simple, constant environment a single clone of E. coli can give rise to a consortium of genetically- and phenotypically-differentiated strains, in effect, a set of ecotypes, that coexist by cross-feeding. We marked these different ecotypes and their shared ancestor by integrating fluorescent protein into their genomes, then used flow cytometry to show that each evolved strain is more fit than the shared ancestor, that pairs of evolved strains are fitter still, and that th...
Source: Applied and Environmental Microbiology - Category: Microbiology Authors: Tags: Appl Environ Microbiol Source Type: research