Pyenson Nora C, Leeks Asher, Nweke Odera, Goldford Joshua E, Schluter Jonas, Turner Paul E, Foster Kevin R, Sanchez Alvaro
Institute for Systems Genetics, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA.
Department of Microbiology, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA.
Science. 2024 Dec 13;386(6727):1294-1300. doi: 10.1126/science.adk1183. Epub 2024 Dec 12.
Bacteriophages are the most abundant and phylogenetically diverse biological entities on Earth, yet the ecological mechanisms that sustain this extraordinary diversity remain unclear. In this study, we discovered that phage diversity consistently outstripped the diversity of their bacterial hosts under simple experimental conditions. We assembled and passaged dozens of diverse phage communities on a single, nonevolving strain of until the phage communities reached equilibrium. In all cases, we found that two or more phage species coexisted stably, despite competition for a single, clonal host population. Phage coexistence was supported through host phenotypic heterogeneity, whereby bacterial cells adopting different growth phenotypes served as niches for different phage species. Our experiments reveal that a rich community ecology of bacteriophages can emerge on a single bacterial host.
噬菌体是地球上数量最为丰富且系统发育最为多样的生物实体，但维持这种非凡多样性的生态机制仍不清楚。在本研究中，我们发现，在简单的实验条件下，噬菌体的多样性始终超过其细菌宿主的多样性。我们在单一的、不发生进化的细菌菌株上组装并传代了数十个不同的噬菌体群落，直到噬菌体群落达到平衡。在所有情况下，我们发现，尽管争夺单一的克隆宿主群体，但两种或更多种噬菌体物种能稳定共存。噬菌体的共存通过宿主表型异质性得到支持，即呈现不同生长表型的细菌细胞充当不同噬菌体物种的生态位。我们的实验表明，单一细菌宿主上可形成丰富的噬菌体群落生态学。
