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Evolution of response dynamics underlying bacterial chemotaxis
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Soyer, Orkun S. and Goldstein, Richard A. (2011) Evolution of response dynamics underlying bacterial chemotaxis. BMC Evolutionary Biology, 11 (1). 240. doi:10.1186/1471-2148-11-240 ISSN 1471-2148.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-11-240
Abstract
Background
The ability to predict the function and structure of complex molecular mechanisms underlying cellular behaviour is one of the main aims of systems biology. To achieve it, we need to understand the evolutionary routes leading to a specific response dynamics that can underlie a given function and how biophysical and environmental factors affect which route is taken. Here, we apply such an evolutionary approach to the bacterial chemotaxis pathway, which is documented to display considerable complexity and diversity.
Results
We construct evolutionarily accessible response dynamics starting from a linear response to absolute levels of attractant, to those observed in current-day Escherichia coli. We explicitly consider bacterial movement as a two-state process composed of non-instantaneous tumbling and swimming modes. We find that a linear response to attractant results in significant chemotaxis when sensitivity to attractant is low and when time spent tumbling is large. More importantly, such linear response is optimal in a regime where signalling has low sensitivity. As sensitivity increases, an adaptive response as seen in Escherichia coli becomes optimal and leads to 'perfect' chemotaxis with a low tumbling time. We find that as tumbling time decreases and sensitivity increases, there exist a parameter regime where the chemotaxis performance of the linear and adaptive responses overlap, suggesting that evolution of chemotaxis responses might provide an example for the principle of functional change in structural continuity.
Conclusions
Our findings explain several results from diverse bacteria and lead to testable predictions regarding chemotaxis responses evolved in bacteria living under different biophysical constraints and with specific motility machinery. Further, they shed light on the potential evolutionary paths for the evolution of complex behaviours from simpler ones in incremental fashion.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||
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Subjects: | Q Science > QH Natural history > QH301 Biology Q Science > QR Microbiology |
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Divisions: | Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Science > Life Sciences (2010- ) | ||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Escherichia coli , Chemotaxis, Systems biology, Adaptation (Biology) | ||||
Journal or Publication Title: | BMC Evolutionary Biology | ||||
Publisher: | BioMed Central Ltd. | ||||
ISSN: | 1471-2148 | ||||
Official Date: | 16 August 2011 | ||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 11 | ||||
Number: | 1 | ||||
Number of Pages: | 9 | ||||
Article Number: | 240 | ||||
DOI: | 10.1186/1471-2148-11-240 | ||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||
Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||
Funder: | University of Exeter (UoE), National Institute for Health Research (Great Britain) (NIHR) |
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