Publication Date:
2015-02-28
Description:
A central process in evolution is the recruitment of genes to regulatory networks. We engineered immotile strains of the bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens that lack flagella due to deletion of the regulatory gene fleQ. Under strong selection for motility, these bacteria consistently regained flagella within 96 hours via a two-step evolutionary pathway. Step 1 mutations increase intracellular levels of phosphorylated NtrC, a distant homolog of FleQ, which begins to commandeer control of the fleQ regulon at the cost of disrupting nitrogen uptake and assimilation. Step 2 is a switch-of-function mutation that redirects NtrC away from nitrogen uptake and toward its novel function as a flagellar regulator. Our results demonstrate that natural selection can rapidly rewire regulatory networks in very few, repeatable mutational steps.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Taylor, Tiffany B -- Mulley, Geraldine -- Dills, Alexander H -- Alsohim, Abdullah S -- McGuffin, Liam J -- Studholme, David J -- Silby, Mark W -- Brockhurst, Michael A -- Johnson, Louise J -- Jackson, Robert W -- BB/J015350/1/Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council/United Kingdom -- BB/K003240/1/Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council/United Kingdom -- WT097835MF/Wellcome Trust/United Kingdom -- WT101650MA/Wellcome Trust/United Kingdom -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2015 Feb 27;347(6225):1014-7. doi: 10.1126/science.1259145.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉School of Biological Sciences, University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading RG6 6AJ, UK. ; Department of Biology, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, 285 Old Westport Road, North Dartmouth, MA 02747, USA. ; School of Biological Sciences, University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading RG6 6AJ, UK. Department of Plant Production and Protection, Qassim University, Qassim, P.O. Box 6622, Saudi Arabia. ; College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Stocker Road, Exeter EX4 4QD, UK. ; Department of Biology, University of York, Wentworth Way, York YO10 5DD, UK. ; School of Biological Sciences, University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading RG6 6AJ, UK. l.j.johnson@reading.ac.uk. ; School of Biological Sciences, University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading RG6 6AJ, UK. The University of Akureyri, Borgir vid Nordurslod, IS-600 Akureyri, Iceland.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25722415" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Bacterial Proteins/genetics/*physiology
;
*Biological Evolution
;
Flagella/genetics/metabolism/*physiology
;
Gene Deletion
;
Gene Expression Regulation, Bacterial
;
Gene Regulatory Networks
;
Nitrogen/*metabolism
;
Pseudomonas fluorescens/genetics/metabolism/*physiology
;
Regulon
;
*Selection, Genetic
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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