After a truly amazing presentation on “Evolution of Plasmid Transfer Genes in Bacterial Communities”, a huge congratulations to @livkosterlitz for earning the prestigious Plasmid Biology Prize at the 2024 @PlasmidSociety meeting in Hamamatsu Japan!

This work was spearheaded by @livkosterlitz in collaboration with @nate_grassi, @baileymwerner, @RS_McGee, and @EvaTop3. We are thrilled to see it appear in @MolBioEvol!.

Horizontal gene transfer is commonplace in bacterial communities. Here we see that if landscapes align adequately, vehicles of HGT (e.g. conjugative plasmids) may enable a distributed form of genetic evolution among community members, allowing species to adaptively “crowdsource.”.

Do rare instances of sign GxH (gene-by-host) interaction affect the evolution of improved resistance? Using evolutionary simulation on empirically-gauged landscapes, we found that HGT did not disrupt adaptive evolution. Therefore, evolutionary “crowdsourcing” via HGT is possible.

The landscape for 5 mutations in a beta-lactamase gene (from pioneering work by @DanWeinreich et al) exhibited remarkable alignment across three enteric species (brown edges) with only 10% of mutations having effects of differing sign in different hosts (multi-color edges).

We developed a high throughput barcoding approach to generate species-specific landscapes. As we focus on a gene engendering antibiotic resistance, these landscapes map genotypes to the level of drug resistance in each host under consideration.

There could also be cases where HGT could facilitate adaptive change. For instance, a suboptimal peak in one species may lie on a path in the other species that leads to a higher peak in both—a case where “outsourcing” adaptation via HGT is beneficial.

However, if topography is radically different between species (ubiquitous “sign GxH” interaction), then progress in one species is anti-progress in another & HGT is a hinderance (in such a case, adaptation proceeds better when evolution takes place “in house”-i.e., “insourcing”).

To start, how does a gene’s adaptive landscape (a map of mutationally connected genotypes to fitness) change as host background changes? If landscape topography is similar across species (left), HGT doesn’t hinder adaptive evolution (right) & adaptation can be “crowdsourced.”

Genes undergoing horizontal transfer (HGT) can experience different host species as they evolve- a feature not shared with their strictly vertically inherited counterparts (which evolve against a more constant genomic backdrop). How does such HGT impact gene evolution?

How does exposure to different hosts affect evolution of bacterial genes on mobile elements? In @MolBioEvol, @livkosterlitz et al use barcode methods to compare adaptive landscapes across species & show alignment enables a form of adaptive “crowdsourcing”🧵

RT @MRebolleda: 🔴 New preprint 🔴 This one is the first with someone from my lab as an author! We used previously identified metabolic rules….

Exciting new resource for math bio folks!.

RT @MRebolleda: I am so excited to read this! I love how each of these authors thinks!.

RT @sse_evolution: Congratulations to Dr. Sally Otto, recipient of the 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award! Don't miss her award talk on Friday….

RT @MRebolleda: I have some preliminary good news, the short of it is that I will be hiring a postdoc soon to work on a collaborative proje….

A wonderful new resource for HGT research! After separately contributing creative new techniques to measure plasmid conjugation, @livkosterlitz & @Jana_Huisman teamed up to write a comprehensive and insightful set of guidelines on the topic. Check out the thread and paper! 👇.

In case you're looking for an article to inspire you, check out this superb new offering from @ozan_g_b, @dahaj1897, @YunkerLab, @wc_ratcliff, and their colleagues. Big congratulations (even bigger than the evolved yeast snowflakes!) to the team on this exciting work!!.

RT @AlisonFeder: Rapid recombination is an important driver of HIV intra-host evolution. Because recombination requires that multiple virus….

RT @wc_ratcliff: @CurrentBiology just published two cool papers on the role of life cycles in the evolution of multicellularity. One by @Ev….