Interactions between horizontally acquired genes create a fitness cost in Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Alvaro San Millan (), Macarena Toll-Riera, Qin Qi and R. Craig MacLean
Additional contact information
Alvaro San Millan: University of Oxford
Macarena Toll-Riera: University of Oxford
Qin Qi: University of Oxford
R. Craig MacLean: University of Oxford

Nature Communications, 2015, vol. 6, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) plays a key role in bacterial evolution, especially with respect to antibiotic resistance. Fitness costs associated with mobile genetic elements (MGEs) are thought to constrain HGT, but our understanding of these costs remains fragmentary, making it difficult to predict the success of HGT events. Here we use the interaction between P. aeruginosa and a costly plasmid (pNUK73) to investigate the molecular basis of the cost of HGT. Using RNA-Seq, we show that the acquisition of pNUK73 results in a profound alteration of the transcriptional profile of chromosomal genes. Mutations that inactivate two genes encoded on chromosomally integrated MGEs recover these fitness costs and transcriptional changes by decreasing the expression of the pNUK73 replication gene. Our study demonstrates that interactions between MGEs can compromise bacterial fitness via altered gene expression, and we argue that conflicts between mobile elements impose a general constraint on evolution by HGT.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms7845 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:6:y:2015:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms7845

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms7845

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().