Costs and benefits of provocation in bacterial warfare.
Costs and benefits of provocation in bacterial warfare.
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DOI：
10.1073/pnas.1801028115
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发表时间：
2018-07-17
影响因子：
11.1
通讯作者：
Mavridou DAI
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Gonzalez D;Sabnis A;Foster KR;Mavridou DAI
Bacteria live in dense environments where competition for space and resources is fierce. For this reason, they often use diffusible toxins to eliminate closely related strains. Some toxins trigger systematic retaliation, raising the question of the role of provocation in bacterial warfare. We combine mathematical modeling and experiments to study the costs and benefits of provocation. In one-to-one encounters, provocation is costly as it leads to strong counterattacks. However, with three or more strains present, provocation can provide benefits via a “divide-and-conquer” effect, whereby a strain forces its opponents to wipe each other out. This effect could be harnessed as a targeted antibacterial approach; adding low levels of certain antibiotics to communities can promote warfare and cross-elimination between strains. Competition in animals involves a wide variety of aggressive behaviors. One of the most sophisticated strategies for a focal actor is to provoke a competitor into uncontrolled aggression toward other competitors. Like animals, bacteria rely on a broad spectrum of molecular weapons, some of which provoke potential rivals by triggering retaliation. While bacterial provocation is well documented, its potential adaptive value has received little attention. Here, we examine the costs and benefits of provocation using mathematical modeling and experiments with Escherichia coli strains encoding colicin toxins. We show that provocation is typically costly in one-to-one encounters because a provoking strain receives a strong reciprocal attack compared with nonprovoking strains. By contrast, provocation can be strongly beneficial in communities including more than two toxin-producing strains, especially when the provoker is shielded from, or resistant to, its opponents’ toxins. In these scenarios, we demonstrate that the benefit of provocation derives from a “divide-and-conquer” effect by which aggression-provoking toxin producers force their competitors into increased reciprocal aggression, leading to their cross-elimination. Furthermore, we show that this effect can be mimicked by using antibiotics that promote warfare among strains in a bacterial community, highlighting the potential of provocation as an antimicrobial approach.
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