Bhattacharyya Souvik, Lopez Shelby, Singh Abhyudai, Harshey Rasika M
Department of Molecular Biosciences, University of Texas at Austin; Austin, TX 78712.
LaMontagne Center for Infectious Diseases, University of Texas at Austin; Austin, TX 78712.
bioRxiv. 2024 Jun 21:2024.06.21.600093. doi: 10.1101/2024.06.21.600093.
Flagella are highly complex rotary molecular machines that enable bacteria to not only migrate to optimal environments but to also promote range expansion, competitiveness, virulence, and antibiotic survival. Flagellar motility is an energy-demanding process, where the sum of its production (biosynthesis) and operation (rotation) costs has been estimated to total ~10% of the entire energy budget of an cell. The acquisition of such a costly adaptation process is expected to secure short-term benefits by increasing competitiveness and survival, as well as long-term evolutionary fitness gains. While the role of flagellar motility in bacterial survival has been widely reported, its direct influence on the rate of evolution remains unclear. We show here that both production and operation costs contribute to elevated mutation frequencies. Our findings suggest that flagellar movement may be an important player in tuning the rate of bacterial evolution.
鞭毛是高度复杂的旋转分子机器，它不仅能使细菌迁移到最佳环境，还能促进其范围扩展、竞争力、毒力和抗生素耐受性。鞭毛运动是一个耗能过程，据估计，其产生（生物合成）和运行（旋转）成本的总和约占细胞总能量预算的10%。获得这样一个代价高昂的适应过程有望通过提高竞争力和生存能力来确保短期利益，以及长期的进化适应性提升。虽然鞭毛运动在细菌生存中的作用已被广泛报道，但其对进化速率的直接影响仍不清楚。我们在此表明，产生和运行成本都会导致突变频率升高。我们的研究结果表明，鞭毛运动可能是调节细菌进化速率的一个重要因素。
