A Selective Bottleneck During Host Entry Drives the Evolution of New Legume Symbionts

During the emergence of new host-microbe symbioses, microbial fitness results from the ability to complete the different steps of symbiotic life cycles, where each step imposes specific selective pressures. However, the relative contribution of these different selective pressures to the adaptive trajectories of microbial symbionts is still poorly known. Here, we characterized the dynamics of phenotypic adaptation to a simplified symbiotic life cycle during the experimental evolution of a plant pathogenic bacterium into a legume symbiont. We observed that fast adaptation was predominantly explained by improved competitiveness for host entry, which outweighed adaptation to within-host proliferation. Whole-population sequencing of bacteria at regular time intervals along this evolution experiment revealed the continuous accumulation of new mutations (fuelled by a transient hypermutagenesis phase occurring at each cycle before host entry, a phenomenon described in previous work) and sequential sweeps of cohorts of mutations with similar temporal trajectories. The identification of adaptive mutations within the fixed mutational cohorts showed that several adaptive mutations can co-occur in the same cohort. Moreover, all adaptive mutations improved competitiveness for host entry, while only a subset of those also improved within-host proliferation. Computer simulations predict that this effect emerges from the presence of a strong selective bottleneck at host entry occurring before within-host proliferation and just after the hypermutagenesis phase in the rhizosphere. Together, these results show how selective bottlenecks can alter the relative influence of selective pressures acting during bacterial adaptation to multistep infection processes.

Automated summary

During the experimental evolution of a plant pathogenic bacterium into a legume symbiont, improved competitiveness for host entry was the main driver of fast adaptation, outweighing adaptation to within-host proliferation. Continuous accumulation of new mutations and sequential sweeps of mutations were observed, with multiple adaptive mutations co-occurring in the same cohort. Selective bottlenecks before within-host proliferation and after the hypermutagenesis phase were found to alter the relative influence of selective pressures during bacterial adaptation to multistep infection processes.