Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Hypermutability impedes cooperation in pathogenic bacteria.

Freya Harrison1, Angus Buckling

  • 1Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. freya.harrison@zoo.ox.ac.uk

Current Biology : CB
|November 8, 2005
PubMed
Summary

Bacterial hypermutability, or mutator alleles, can accelerate adaptation but also promote cheating. Our study shows that mutator strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa evolved costly siderophore cheats more rapidly, harming group cooperation.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Low concentrations of tetrasodium EDTA cause significant killing of biofilm-associated Pseudomonas aeruginosa in high-validity models of chronic wound and cystic fibrosis lung infections - but not in a model of endotracheal tube colonization.

Access microbiology·2026
Same author

Short-term antagonism between bacteriophages and macrophages decreases with bacteria-phage coevolution.

The ISME journal·2026
Same author

A novel method to simultaneously estimate bacterial respiration and growth from oxygen dynamics.

ISME communications·2026
Same author

<i>Pseudomonas aeruginosa</i> gene expression changes during established biofilm infection in a cystic fibrosis lung model.

Microbiology (Reading, England)·2026
Same author

To survive in the cold: the evolution of reduced decay rate in a bacteriophage.

Evolution; international journal of organic evolution·2026
Same author

Microbial Primer: Ancientbiotics - making modern antimicrobials from historical infection remedies.

Microbiology (Reading, England)·2026

Area of Science:

  • Microbiology
  • Evolutionary Biology
  • Genetics

Background:

  • Bacterial mutator alleles can enhance adaptation by increasing mutation rates.
  • However, hypermutability can be disadvantageous when populations are well-adapted due to increased deleterious mutations.
  • Hypermutability may also impose a cost by disrupting social cooperation.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if hypermutability facilitates the evolution of cheating in bacterial populations.
  • To determine the impact of cheating on group behavior and population density.
  • To use Pseudomonas aeruginosa's siderophore production as a model for cooperation.

Main Methods:

  • Experimental evolution of wild-type and mutator Pseudomonas aeruginosa populations.
  • Monitoring the de novo evolution and frequency increase of siderophore-deficient cheats over 200 generations.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Assessing the impact of cheat frequency on population density.

    • Main Results:

    • Siderophore cheats evolved and increased in frequency in both wild-type and mutator populations.
    • Cheats emerged and proliferated significantly faster in mutator populations.
    • Increased cheat frequency negatively correlated with population density, indicating a cost to the group.

    Conclusions:

    • Bacterial hypermutability can accelerate the evolution of social cheating.
    • This breakdown of cooperation represents a significant cost of mutator alleles in certain conditions.
    • Understanding these dynamics is crucial for microbial ecology and evolution.