Fitness benefits of low infectivity in a spatially structured population of bacteriophages.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Roychoudhury P
PROVIDER: S-EPMC3843840 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Jan
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
Fitness benefits of low infectivity in a spatially structured population of bacteriophages.
Roychoudhury Pavitra P Shrestha Neelima N Wiss Valorie R VR Krone Stephen M SM
Proceedings. Biological sciences 20131113 1774
For a parasite evolving in a spatially structured environment, an evolutionarily advantageous strategy may be to reduce its transmission rate or infectivity. We demonstrate this empirically using bacteriophage (phage) from an evolution experiment where spatial structure was maintained over 550 phage generations on agar plates. We found that a single substitution in the major capsid protein led to slower adsorption of phage to host cells with no change in lysis time or burst size. Plaques formed ...[more]
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