The Single-Stranded RNA Bacteriophage Q? Adapts Rapidly to High Temperatures: An Evolution Experiment.

ABSTRACT: Single-stranded (ss)RNA viruses are thought to evolve rapidly due to an inherently high mutation rate. However, it remains unclear how ssRNA viruses adapt to novel environments and/or how many and what types of substitutions are needed to facilitate this evolution. In this study, we followed the adaptation of the ssRNA bacteriophage Q? using thermally adapted Escherichia coli as a host, which can efficiently grow at temperatures between 37.2 and 45.3 °C. This made it possible to evaluate Q? adaptation to the highest known temperature that supports growth, 45.3 °C. We found that Q? was capable of replication at this temperature; within 114 days (~1260 generations), we detected more than 34 novel point mutations in the genome of the thermally adapted Q? population, representing 0.8% of the total Q? genome. In addition, we returned the 45.3 °C-adapted Q? populations to 37.2 °C and passaged them for 8 days (~124 generations). We found that the reverse-adapted Q? population showed little to no decrease in fitness. These results indicate that Q? can evolve in response to increasing temperatures in a short period of time with the accumulation of point mutations.

SUBMITTER: Hossain MT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7354602 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature