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Ancient balancing selection on heterocyst function in a cosmopolitan cyanobacterium

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 2, pages 510–519 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

The conventional view of bacterial adaptation emphasizes the importance of rapidly evolved changes that are highly repeatable in response to similar environments and subject to loss in the absence of selection. Consequently, genetic variation is not expected to persist over long time scales for these organisms. Here, we show that a geographically widespread gene content polymorphism has surprisingly been maintained for tens of millions of years of diversification of the multicellular cyanobacterium Fischerella thermalis. The polymorphism affects gas permeability of the heterocyst—the oxygen-sensitive, nitrogen-fixing cell produced by these bacteria—and spatial variation in temperature favours alternative alleles due to thermodynamic effects on both heterocyst function and organism fitness at physiological temperature extremes. Whether or not ancient balancing selection plays a generally important role in the maintenance of microbial diversity remains to be investigated.

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Fig. 1: Genomic diversity and genetic differentiation of White Creek F. thermalis.
Fig. 2: Genes differentiated between upstream and downstream White Creek F. thermalis are distributed throughout the genome.
Fig. 3: Nitrogen-fixation activities of wild-type Anabaena PCC 7120 and HEP deletion mutant strains.
Fig. 4: Temperature dependence of F. thermalis physiological rates.
Fig. 5: The HEP deletion was a unique event that occurred early during F. thermalis diversification.
Fig. 6: Long-term balancing selection on the HEP indel polymorphism.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Cory Cleveland laboratory group for use of their gas chromatograph, J. Meeks and his laboratory group for strains and technical advice, and J. Driver at the University of Montana EMtrix electron microscopy facility. We also thank D. Vanderpool for advice and sharing custom Python scripts used in the phylogenomics analyses. We are grateful to L. Fishman, J. McCutcheon, M. Polz, F. Rosenzweig and A. Woods for reading and commenting on earlier versions of the manuscript. Field work was conducted under National Park Service research permit YELL-5482. This work was supported by US National Science Foundation award IOS-1110819 and by NASA Astrobiology Institute award NNA15BB04A to S.R.M.

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  1. Division of Biological Sciences, University of Montana, Missoula, MT, USA

    Emiko B. Sano, Christopher A. Wall, Patrick R. Hutchins & Scott R. Miller

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Contributions

S.R.M. conceived the study. C.A.W., E.B.S. and S.R.M. performed the genome sequencing, assembly and annotation. P.R.H. assayed nitrogen fixation by F. thermalis in the laboratory and field. E.B.S. constructed the Anabaena mutant strains and conducted physiological assays of Anabaena strains. E.B.S. measured the oxygen concentration at White Creek. S.R.M. performed the population genomic, phylogenomic and molecular clock dating analyses. S.R.M. and E.B.S. wrote the manuscript. All authors read and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Scott R. Miller.

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Sano, E.B., Wall, C.A., Hutchins, P.R. et al. Ancient balancing selection on heterocyst function in a cosmopolitan cyanobacterium. Nat Ecol Evol 2, 510–519 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-017-0435-9

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