Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 108, Issue 34, Pages 14181-14185Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1111147108
Keywords
social evolution; cooperation; quorum sensing
Categories
Funding
- National Science Foundation [MCB-0343821]
- Princeton Centennial Fellowship
- Defense Advanced Research Planning Agency [HR0011-05-1-0057]
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute
- National Institutes of Health [5R01GM065859]
- Direct For Biological Sciences
- Div Of Molecular and Cellular Bioscience [0948112] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Bacteria commonly grow in densely populated surface-bound communities, termed biofilms, where they gain benefits including superior access to nutrients and resistance to environmental insults. The secretion of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS), which bind bacterial collectives together, is ubiquitously associated with biofilm formation. It is generally assumed that EPS secretion is a cooperative phenotype that benefits all neighboring cells, but in fact little is known about the competitive and evolutionary dynamics of EPS production. By studying Vibrio cholerae biofilms in microfluidic devices, we show that EPS-producing cells selectively benefit their clonemates and gain a dramatic advantage in competition against an isogenic EPS-deficient strain. However, this advantage carries an ecological cost beyond the energetic requirement for EPS production: EPS-producing cells are impaired for dispersal to new locations. Our study establishes that a fundamental tradeoff between local competition and dispersal exists among bacteria. Furthermore, this tradeoff can be governed by a single phenotype.
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