Cargando…

Long-term experimental evolution decouples size and production costs in Escherichia coli

Body size covaries with population dynamics across life’s domains. Metabolism may impose fundamental constraints on the coevolution of size and demography, but experimental tests of the causal links remain elusive. We leverage a 60,000-generation experiment in which Escherichia coli populations evol...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Marshall, Dustin J., Malerba, Martino, Lines, Thomas, Sezmis, Aysha L., Hasan, Chowdhury M., Lenski, Richard E., McDonald, Michael J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: National Academy of Sciences 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9173777/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35594402
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2200713119
_version_ 1784722092427575296
author Marshall, Dustin J.
Malerba, Martino
Lines, Thomas
Sezmis, Aysha L.
Hasan, Chowdhury M.
Lenski, Richard E.
McDonald, Michael J.
author_facet Marshall, Dustin J.
Malerba, Martino
Lines, Thomas
Sezmis, Aysha L.
Hasan, Chowdhury M.
Lenski, Richard E.
McDonald, Michael J.
author_sort Marshall, Dustin J.
collection PubMed
description Body size covaries with population dynamics across life’s domains. Metabolism may impose fundamental constraints on the coevolution of size and demography, but experimental tests of the causal links remain elusive. We leverage a 60,000-generation experiment in which Escherichia coli populations evolved larger cells to examine intraspecific metabolic scaling and correlations with demographic parameters. Over the course of their evolution, the cells have roughly doubled in size relative to their ancestors. These larger cells have metabolic rates that are absolutely higher, but relative to their size, they are lower. Metabolic theory successfully predicted the relations between size, metabolism, and maximum population density, including support for Damuth’s law of energy equivalence, such that populations of larger cells achieved lower maximum densities but higher maximum biomasses than populations of smaller cells. The scaling of metabolism with cell size thus predicted the scaling of size with maximum population density. In stark contrast to standard theory, however, populations of larger cells grew faster than those of smaller cells, contradicting the fundamental and intuitive assumption that the costs of building new individuals should scale directly with their size. The finding that the costs of production can be decoupled from size necessitates a reevaluation of the evolutionary drivers and ecological consequences of biological size more generally.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-9173777
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2022
publisher National Academy of Sciences
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-91737772022-11-20 Long-term experimental evolution decouples size and production costs in Escherichia coli Marshall, Dustin J. Malerba, Martino Lines, Thomas Sezmis, Aysha L. Hasan, Chowdhury M. Lenski, Richard E. McDonald, Michael J. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A Biological Sciences Body size covaries with population dynamics across life’s domains. Metabolism may impose fundamental constraints on the coevolution of size and demography, but experimental tests of the causal links remain elusive. We leverage a 60,000-generation experiment in which Escherichia coli populations evolved larger cells to examine intraspecific metabolic scaling and correlations with demographic parameters. Over the course of their evolution, the cells have roughly doubled in size relative to their ancestors. These larger cells have metabolic rates that are absolutely higher, but relative to their size, they are lower. Metabolic theory successfully predicted the relations between size, metabolism, and maximum population density, including support for Damuth’s law of energy equivalence, such that populations of larger cells achieved lower maximum densities but higher maximum biomasses than populations of smaller cells. The scaling of metabolism with cell size thus predicted the scaling of size with maximum population density. In stark contrast to standard theory, however, populations of larger cells grew faster than those of smaller cells, contradicting the fundamental and intuitive assumption that the costs of building new individuals should scale directly with their size. The finding that the costs of production can be decoupled from size necessitates a reevaluation of the evolutionary drivers and ecological consequences of biological size more generally. National Academy of Sciences 2022-05-20 2022-05-24 /pmc/articles/PMC9173777/ /pubmed/35594402 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2200713119 Text en Copyright © 2022 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Biological Sciences
Marshall, Dustin J.
Malerba, Martino
Lines, Thomas
Sezmis, Aysha L.
Hasan, Chowdhury M.
Lenski, Richard E.
McDonald, Michael J.
Long-term experimental evolution decouples size and production costs in Escherichia coli
title Long-term experimental evolution decouples size and production costs in Escherichia coli
title_full Long-term experimental evolution decouples size and production costs in Escherichia coli
title_fullStr Long-term experimental evolution decouples size and production costs in Escherichia coli
title_full_unstemmed Long-term experimental evolution decouples size and production costs in Escherichia coli
title_short Long-term experimental evolution decouples size and production costs in Escherichia coli
title_sort long-term experimental evolution decouples size and production costs in escherichia coli
topic Biological Sciences
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9173777/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35594402
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2200713119
work_keys_str_mv AT marshalldustinj longtermexperimentalevolutiondecouplessizeandproductioncostsinescherichiacoli
AT malerbamartino longtermexperimentalevolutiondecouplessizeandproductioncostsinescherichiacoli
AT linesthomas longtermexperimentalevolutiondecouplessizeandproductioncostsinescherichiacoli
AT sezmisayshal longtermexperimentalevolutiondecouplessizeandproductioncostsinescherichiacoli
AT hasanchowdhurym longtermexperimentalevolutiondecouplessizeandproductioncostsinescherichiacoli
AT lenskiricharde longtermexperimentalevolutiondecouplessizeandproductioncostsinescherichiacoli
AT mcdonaldmichaelj longtermexperimentalevolutiondecouplessizeandproductioncostsinescherichiacoli