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Crystal toxins and the volunteer's dilemma in bacteria
The growth and virulence of the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis depend on the production of Cry toxins, which are used to perforate the gut of its host. Successful invasion of the host relies on producing a threshold amount of toxin, after which there is no benefit from producing more toxin. Consequ...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
John Wiley and Sons Inc.
2019
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6487926/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30672052 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jeb.13415 |
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author | Patel, Matishalin Raymond, Ben Bonsall, Michael B. West, Stuart A. |
author_facet | Patel, Matishalin Raymond, Ben Bonsall, Michael B. West, Stuart A. |
author_sort | Patel, Matishalin |
collection | PubMed |
description | The growth and virulence of the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis depend on the production of Cry toxins, which are used to perforate the gut of its host. Successful invasion of the host relies on producing a threshold amount of toxin, after which there is no benefit from producing more toxin. Consequently, the production of Cry toxin appears to be a different type of social problem compared with the public goods scenarios that bacteria usually encounter. We show that selection for toxin production is a volunteer's dilemma. We make specific predictions that (a) selection for toxin production depends upon an interplay between the number of bacterial cells that each host ingests and the genetic relatedness between those cells; (b) cheats that do not produce toxin gain an advantage when at low frequencies, and at high bacterial density, allowing them to be maintained in a population alongside toxin‐producing cells. More generally, our results emphasize the diversity of the social games that bacteria play. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6487926 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | John Wiley and Sons Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-64879262019-05-06 Crystal toxins and the volunteer's dilemma in bacteria Patel, Matishalin Raymond, Ben Bonsall, Michael B. West, Stuart A. J Evol Biol Research Papers The growth and virulence of the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis depend on the production of Cry toxins, which are used to perforate the gut of its host. Successful invasion of the host relies on producing a threshold amount of toxin, after which there is no benefit from producing more toxin. Consequently, the production of Cry toxin appears to be a different type of social problem compared with the public goods scenarios that bacteria usually encounter. We show that selection for toxin production is a volunteer's dilemma. We make specific predictions that (a) selection for toxin production depends upon an interplay between the number of bacterial cells that each host ingests and the genetic relatedness between those cells; (b) cheats that do not produce toxin gain an advantage when at low frequencies, and at high bacterial density, allowing them to be maintained in a population alongside toxin‐producing cells. More generally, our results emphasize the diversity of the social games that bacteria play. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2019-02-17 2019-04 /pmc/articles/PMC6487926/ /pubmed/30672052 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jeb.13415 Text en © 2019 The Authors. Journal of Evolutionary Biology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Society for Evolutionary Biology. This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Research Papers Patel, Matishalin Raymond, Ben Bonsall, Michael B. West, Stuart A. Crystal toxins and the volunteer's dilemma in bacteria |
title | Crystal toxins and the volunteer's dilemma in bacteria |
title_full | Crystal toxins and the volunteer's dilemma in bacteria |
title_fullStr | Crystal toxins and the volunteer's dilemma in bacteria |
title_full_unstemmed | Crystal toxins and the volunteer's dilemma in bacteria |
title_short | Crystal toxins and the volunteer's dilemma in bacteria |
title_sort | crystal toxins and the volunteer's dilemma in bacteria |
topic | Research Papers |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6487926/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30672052 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jeb.13415 |
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