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Adaptive evolution and inherent tolerance to extreme thermal environments

BACKGROUND: When introduced to novel environments, the ability for a species to survive and rapidly proliferate corresponds with its adaptive potential. Of the many factors that can yield an environment inhospitable to foreign species, phenotypic response to variation in the thermal climate has been...

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Autores principales: Cox, Jennifer, Schubert, Alyxandria M, Travisano, Michael, Putonti, Catherine
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2010
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2850354/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20226044
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-10-75
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author Cox, Jennifer
Schubert, Alyxandria M
Travisano, Michael
Putonti, Catherine
author_facet Cox, Jennifer
Schubert, Alyxandria M
Travisano, Michael
Putonti, Catherine
author_sort Cox, Jennifer
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: When introduced to novel environments, the ability for a species to survive and rapidly proliferate corresponds with its adaptive potential. Of the many factors that can yield an environment inhospitable to foreign species, phenotypic response to variation in the thermal climate has been observed within a wide variety of species. Experimental evolution studies using bacteriophage model systems have been able to elucidate mutations, which may correspond with the ability of phage to survive modest increases/decreases in the temperature of their environment. RESULTS: Phage ΦX174 was subjected to both elevated (50°C) and extreme (70°C+) temperatures for anywhere from a few hours to days. While no decline in the phage's fitness was detected when it was exposed to 50°C for a few hours, more extreme temperatures significantly impaired the phage; isolates that survived these heat treatments included the acquisition of several mutations within structural genes. As was expected, long-term treatment of elevated and extreme temperatures, ranging from 50-75°C, reduced the survival rate even more. Isolates which survived the initial treatment at 70°C for 24 or 48 hours exhibited a significantly greater tolerance to subsequent heat treatments. CONCLUSIONS: Using the model organism ΦX174, we have been able to study adaptive evolution on the molecular level under extreme thermal changes in the environment, which to-date had yet to be thoroughly examined. Under both acute and extended thermal selection, we were able to observe mutations that occurred in response to excessive external pressures independent of concurrently evolving hosts. Even though its host cannot tolerate extreme temperatures such as the ones tested here, this study confirms that ΦX174 is capable of survival.
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spelling pubmed-28503542010-04-07 Adaptive evolution and inherent tolerance to extreme thermal environments Cox, Jennifer Schubert, Alyxandria M Travisano, Michael Putonti, Catherine BMC Evol Biol Research article BACKGROUND: When introduced to novel environments, the ability for a species to survive and rapidly proliferate corresponds with its adaptive potential. Of the many factors that can yield an environment inhospitable to foreign species, phenotypic response to variation in the thermal climate has been observed within a wide variety of species. Experimental evolution studies using bacteriophage model systems have been able to elucidate mutations, which may correspond with the ability of phage to survive modest increases/decreases in the temperature of their environment. RESULTS: Phage ΦX174 was subjected to both elevated (50°C) and extreme (70°C+) temperatures for anywhere from a few hours to days. While no decline in the phage's fitness was detected when it was exposed to 50°C for a few hours, more extreme temperatures significantly impaired the phage; isolates that survived these heat treatments included the acquisition of several mutations within structural genes. As was expected, long-term treatment of elevated and extreme temperatures, ranging from 50-75°C, reduced the survival rate even more. Isolates which survived the initial treatment at 70°C for 24 or 48 hours exhibited a significantly greater tolerance to subsequent heat treatments. CONCLUSIONS: Using the model organism ΦX174, we have been able to study adaptive evolution on the molecular level under extreme thermal changes in the environment, which to-date had yet to be thoroughly examined. Under both acute and extended thermal selection, we were able to observe mutations that occurred in response to excessive external pressures independent of concurrently evolving hosts. Even though its host cannot tolerate extreme temperatures such as the ones tested here, this study confirms that ΦX174 is capable of survival. BioMed Central 2010-03-12 /pmc/articles/PMC2850354/ /pubmed/20226044 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-10-75 Text en Copyright ©2010 Cox et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research article
Cox, Jennifer
Schubert, Alyxandria M
Travisano, Michael
Putonti, Catherine
Adaptive evolution and inherent tolerance to extreme thermal environments
title Adaptive evolution and inherent tolerance to extreme thermal environments
title_full Adaptive evolution and inherent tolerance to extreme thermal environments
title_fullStr Adaptive evolution and inherent tolerance to extreme thermal environments
title_full_unstemmed Adaptive evolution and inherent tolerance to extreme thermal environments
title_short Adaptive evolution and inherent tolerance to extreme thermal environments
title_sort adaptive evolution and inherent tolerance to extreme thermal environments
topic Research article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2850354/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20226044
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-10-75
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