Ecological and Evolutionary Consequences of Viral Plasticity

The American Naturalist
Melinda Choua, Juan A Bonachela

Abstract

Viruses use the host machinery to replicate, and their performance thus depends on the host's physiological state. For bacteriophages, this link between host and viral performance has been characterized empirically and with intracellular theories. Such theories are too detailed to be included in models that study host-phage interactions in the long term, which hinders our understanding of systems that range from pathogens infecting gut bacteria to marine phage shaping the oceans. Here, we combined data and models to study the short- and long-term consequences that host physiology has on bacteriophage performance. We compiled data showing the dependence of lytic-phage traits on host growth rate (referred to as viral phenotypic plasticity) to deduce simple expressions that represent such plasticity. Including these expressions in a standard host-phage model allowed us to understand mechanistically how viral plasticity affects emergent evolutionary strategies and the population dynamics associated with different environmental scenarios including, for example, nutrient pulses or host starvation. Moreover, we show that plasticity on the offspring number drives the phage ecological and evolutionary dynamics by reinforcing feedbacks b...Continue Reading

Citations

Mar 11, 2020·Frontiers in Microbiology·Julie PourtoisJuan A Bonachela
Sep 17, 2020·Nature Communications·Ben KnowlesKay D Bidle
Nov 7, 2019·Nature Reviews. Microbiology·Amy E ZimmermanMaureen L Coleman
Jun 8, 2021·Frontiers in Microbiology·Melinda ChouaJuan A Bonachela

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