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Sympatric metabolic diversification of experimentally evolved Escherichia coli in a complex environment

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Abstract

Sympatric diversification in bacteria has been found to contravene initial evolutionary theories affirming the selection of the fittest type by competition for the same resource. Studies in unstructured (well-mixed) environments have discovered divergence of an ancestor strain into genomically and phenotypically divergent types growing both on single and mixed energy sources. This study addresses the metabolic diversification in an Escherichia coli population that evolved over ~1,000 generations under aerobic conditions in the nutritional complexity offered by Luria–Bertani (LB) broth. The medium lacked glucose but contained a variety of other resources. Two distinct metabolically-diverged types, coinciding with colony morphologies, were found to dominate the populations. One type was an avid carbohydrate consumer, which could quickly utilize the available (alternative) substrates feeding into glycolysis. The second type was a slow grower, which was able to specifically consume acetate. The capacity to utilize acetate might be providing an advantage to this second type, suggesting an increased capability to deal with adverse conditions that occur in the later stages of growth. The diverged metabolic preferences of the two forms suggested differential and interactive ecological roles within the population. We postulate that these types used different alternative metabolic strategies occupying different niches in a sympatric manner as an outcome of adaptation to the complex environment.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the partners of the Popcorn consortium for their wise comments and expertise. We also thank NWO and the ERA IB- for financing this research.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Microbial Ecology, University of Groningen, Nijenborgh 7, 9747 AG, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Pilar Eliana Puentes-Téllez & Jan Dirk van Elsas

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  1. Pilar Eliana Puentes-Téllez
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  2. Jan Dirk van Elsas
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Correspondence to Pilar Eliana Puentes-Téllez.

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Puentes-Téllez, P.E., van Elsas, J.D. Sympatric metabolic diversification of experimentally evolved Escherichia coli in a complex environment. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek 106, 565–576 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10482-014-0228-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10482-014-0228-y

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