Editor's Summary

13 December 2007

Driven by competition

Bacterial cultures in changing environments sometimes accumulate 'mutator' strains, with elevated mutation rates, presumably to enhance their potential for adaptive evolution. This can often happen in clinical situations. If they are to persist, mutators need a consistently changing environment. Coevolution with parasites, such as viruses, is a scenario that can provide that. Experiments with Pseudomonas fluorescens now show that coevolution with a naturally occurring bacteriophage significantly increases bacterial mutation rates — and results in a higher probability of phage extinction. Targeting phage populations might therefore be a way of weakening selection for mutator bacteria in clinical infections.

Letter: Coevolution with viruses drives the evolution of bacterial mutation rates

Csaba Pal, María D. Maciá, Antonio Oliver, Ira Schachar & Angus Buckling

doi:10.1038/nature06350

First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (265K) | Supplementary information