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National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 30(111), p. 11103-11108, 2014

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1406840111

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Genetic information transfer promotes cooperation in bacteria

Journal article published in 2014 by Tatiana Dimitriu, Chantal Lotton, J. Benard-Capelle, Julien Bénard-Capelle, Dusan Misevic, Sam P. Brown ORCID, Ariel B. Lindner, François Taddei
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

Significance Bacteria often cooperate through the production of public goods that change their environment. These processes can affect human health by increasing virulence or antibiotic resistance. Public good production is costly, making cooperation susceptible to invasion by nonproducing “cheater” individuals. Bacteria also readily share genes, even among distinct species. Our experiments and models converge to show that when both cheating and cooperative genes are transferred, cooperators win against cheaters because transfer increases assortment among alleles, favoring cooperation. This can explain why genes for cooperation are often mobile, and suggests that, in addition to reducing antibiotic resistance spread, preventing gene mobility could reduce cooperative virulence.