自由生活的病原体：生活史限制与菌株竞争

Caraco Thomas, Wang Ing-Nang

Department of Biological Sciences, University at Albany, Albany, NY 12222, USA.

J Theor Biol. 2008 Feb 7;250(3):569-79. doi: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2007.10.029. Epub 2007 Oct 30.

Many pathogen life histories include a free-living stage, often with anatomical and physiological adaptations promoting persistence outside of host tissues. More durable particles presumably require that the pathogen metabolize more resources per particle. Therefore, we hypothesize functional dependencies, pleiotropic constraints, between the rate at which free-living particles decay outside of host tissues and other pathogen traits, including virulence, the probability of infecting a host upon contact, and pathogen reproduction within host tissues. Assuming that pathogen strains compete for hosts preemptively, we find patterns in trait dependencies predicting whether or not strain competition favors a highly persistent free-living stage.

许多病原体的生活史包括一个自由生活阶段，通常具有促进在宿主组织外持续存在的解剖学和生理学适应性。更持久的颗粒可能要求病原体每个颗粒代谢更多资源。因此，我们假设在宿主组织外自由生活颗粒的衰变速率与其他病原体特征之间存在功能依赖性和多效性限制，这些特征包括毒力、接触宿主后感染宿主的概率以及病原体在宿主组织内的繁殖。假设病原体菌株先发制人地争夺宿主，我们发现了性状依赖性的模式，这些模式预测菌株竞争是否有利于高度持久的自由生活阶段。