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Chance and necessity in the evolution of a bacterial pathogen

Nature Genetics volume 43, pages 1174–1176 (2011)Cite this article

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The combination of genomic, epidemiological and evolutionary analyses provides a powerful toolbox for understanding how pathogens adapt to their human hosts. By sequencing 112 Burkholderia dolosa genomes from an outbreak among patients with cystic fibrosis, a new study documents evolution in action and identifies a set of genes that contributed to the pathogen's adaptation.

The ancient Greek philosopher Democritus said that “everything existing in the universe is the fruit of chance and necessity.” In biology, random mutation and adaptation by natural selection give rise to an evolutionary tug of war between chance and necessity. On page 1275 of this issue, Roy Kishony and colleagues1 use the repeatability of some evolutionary changes to identify genes under positive selection in an opportunistic pathogen, B. dolosa, during an outbreak among individuals with cystic fibrosis. The authors sequenced whole genomes of this pathogen isolated from 14 subjects over the course of 16 years. They identified 17 bacterial genes in which mutations arose independently in several individuals, suggesting that these changes were important for adaptive evolution of the bacteria to the host environment. The time series of samples from multiple patients provided ideal material for analyses combining genomic, epidemiological and evolutionary approaches, and the bacteria that infect individuals with cystic fibrosis are well suited for this type of research1,2,3,4.

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Figure 1: Two approaches to identify targets of selection in the B. dolosa genome during an outbreak among cystic fibrosis patients.

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  1. Richard E. Lenski is at the BEACON Center for the Study of Evolution in Action, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA.,

    Richard E. Lenski

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  1. Richard E. Lenski
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Correspondence to Richard E. Lenski.

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Lenski, R. Chance and necessity in the evolution of a bacterial pathogen. Nat Genet 43, 1174–1176 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/ng.1011

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