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Is cooperation favored by horizontal gene transfer?
It has been hypothesized that horizontal gene transfer on plasmids can facilitate the evolution of cooperation, by allowing genes to jump between bacteria, and hence increase genetic relatedness at the cooperative loci. However, we show theoretically that horizontal gene transfer only appreciably in...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Oxford University Press
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10210433/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37251586 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/evlett/qrad003 |
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author | Scott, Thomas W West, Stuart A Dewar, Anna E Wild, Geoff |
author_facet | Scott, Thomas W West, Stuart A Dewar, Anna E Wild, Geoff |
author_sort | Scott, Thomas W |
collection | PubMed |
description | It has been hypothesized that horizontal gene transfer on plasmids can facilitate the evolution of cooperation, by allowing genes to jump between bacteria, and hence increase genetic relatedness at the cooperative loci. However, we show theoretically that horizontal gene transfer only appreciably increases relatedness when plasmids are rare, where there are many plasmid-free cells available to infect (many opportunities for horizontal gene transfer). In contrast, when plasmids are common, there are few opportunities for horizontal gene transfer, meaning relatedness is not appreciably increased, and so cooperation is not favored. Plasmids, therefore, evolve to be rare and cooperative, or common and noncooperative, meaning plasmid frequency and cooperativeness are never simultaneously high. The overall level of plasmid-mediated cooperation, given by the product of plasmid frequency and cooperativeness, is therefore consistently negligible or low. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10210433 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Oxford University Press |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-102104332023-05-26 Is cooperation favored by horizontal gene transfer? Scott, Thomas W West, Stuart A Dewar, Anna E Wild, Geoff Evol Lett Letters It has been hypothesized that horizontal gene transfer on plasmids can facilitate the evolution of cooperation, by allowing genes to jump between bacteria, and hence increase genetic relatedness at the cooperative loci. However, we show theoretically that horizontal gene transfer only appreciably increases relatedness when plasmids are rare, where there are many plasmid-free cells available to infect (many opportunities for horizontal gene transfer). In contrast, when plasmids are common, there are few opportunities for horizontal gene transfer, meaning relatedness is not appreciably increased, and so cooperation is not favored. Plasmids, therefore, evolve to be rare and cooperative, or common and noncooperative, meaning plasmid frequency and cooperativeness are never simultaneously high. The overall level of plasmid-mediated cooperation, given by the product of plasmid frequency and cooperativeness, is therefore consistently negligible or low. Oxford University Press 2023-04-24 /pmc/articles/PMC10210433/ /pubmed/37251586 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/evlett/qrad003 Text en © The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE) and European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEN). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Letters Scott, Thomas W West, Stuart A Dewar, Anna E Wild, Geoff Is cooperation favored by horizontal gene transfer? |
title | Is cooperation favored by horizontal gene transfer? |
title_full | Is cooperation favored by horizontal gene transfer? |
title_fullStr | Is cooperation favored by horizontal gene transfer? |
title_full_unstemmed | Is cooperation favored by horizontal gene transfer? |
title_short | Is cooperation favored by horizontal gene transfer? |
title_sort | is cooperation favored by horizontal gene transfer? |
topic | Letters |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10210433/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37251586 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/evlett/qrad003 |
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