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Hernandez-Beltran JCR, Rodríguez-Beltrán J, Aguilar-Luviano OB, Velez-Santiago J, Mondragón-Palomino O, MacLean RC, Fuentes-Hernández A, San Millán A, Peña-Miller R. Plasmid-mediated phenotypic noise leads to transient antibiotic resistance in bacteria. Nat Commun 2024; 15:2610. [PMID: 38521779 PMCID: PMC10960800 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-45045-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/24/2023] [Accepted: 01/12/2024] [Indexed: 03/25/2024] Open
Abstract
The rise of antibiotic resistance is a critical public health concern, requiring an understanding of mechanisms that enable bacteria to tolerate antimicrobial agents. Bacteria use diverse strategies, including the amplification of drug-resistance genes. In this paper, we showed that multicopy plasmids, often carrying antibiotic resistance genes in clinical bacteria, can rapidly amplify genes, leading to plasmid-mediated phenotypic noise and transient antibiotic resistance. By combining stochastic simulations of a computational model with high-throughput single-cell measurements of blaTEM-1 expression in Escherichia coli MG1655, we showed that plasmid copy number variability stably maintains populations composed of cells with both low and high plasmid copy numbers. This diversity in plasmid copy number enhances the probability of bacterial survival in the presence of antibiotics, while also rapidly reducing the burden of carrying multiple plasmids in drug-free environments. Our results further support the tenet that multicopy plasmids not only act as vehicles for the horizontal transfer of genetic information between cells but also as drivers of bacterial adaptation, enabling rapid modulation of gene copy numbers. Understanding the role of multicopy plasmids in antibiotic resistance is critical, and our study provides insights into how bacteria can transiently survive lethal concentrations of antibiotics.
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Affiliation(s)
- J Carlos R Hernandez-Beltran
- Center for Genomic Sciences, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 62210, Cuernavaca, México.
- Department of Microbial Population Biology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, 24306, Plön, Germany.
| | | | | | - Jesús Velez-Santiago
- Center for Genomic Sciences, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 62210, Cuernavaca, México
| | - Octavio Mondragón-Palomino
- Laboratory of Parasitic Diseases, National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, 20892, USA
| | - R Craig MacLean
- Department of Biology, University of Oxford, OX1 3SZ, Oxford, UK
| | - Ayari Fuentes-Hernández
- Center for Genomic Sciences, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 62210, Cuernavaca, México
| | - Alvaro San Millán
- Department of Microbial Biotechnology, Centro Nacional de Biotecnología - CSIC, 28049, Madrid, Spain
| | - Rafael Peña-Miller
- Center for Genomic Sciences, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 62210, Cuernavaca, México.
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Hernandez-Beltran JCR, Rodríguez-Beltrán J, Millán AS, Peña-Miller R, Fuentes-Hernández A. Quantifying plasmid dynamics using single-cell microfluidics and image bioinformatics. Plasmid 2020; 113:102517. [PMID: 32535165 DOI: 10.1016/j.plasmid.2020.102517] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/17/2020] [Revised: 05/20/2020] [Accepted: 05/21/2020] [Indexed: 01/22/2023]
Abstract
Multicopy plasmids play an important role in bacterial ecology and evolution by accelerating the rate of adaptation and providing a platform for rapid gene amplification and evolutionary rescue. Despite the relevance of plasmids in bacterial evolutionary dynamics, evaluating the population-level consequences of randomly segregating and replicating plasmids in individual cells remains a challenging problem, both in theory and experimentally. In recent years, technological advances in fluorescence microscopy and microfluidics have allowed studying temporal changes in gene expression by quantifying the fluorescent intensity of individual cells under controlled environmental conditions. In this paper, we will describe the manufacture, experimental setup, and data analysis pipeline of different microfluidic systems that can be used to study plasmid dynamics, both in single-cells and in populations. To illustrate the benefits and limitations of microfluidics to study multicopy plasmid dynamics, we will use an experimental model system consisting on Escherichia coli K12 carrying non-conjugative, multicopy plasmids (19 copies per cell, in average) encoding different fluorescent markers and β-lactam resistance genes. First, we will use an image-based flow cytometer to estimate changes in the allele distribution of a heterogeneous population under different selection regimes. Then we will use a mothermachine microfluidic device to obtain time-series of fluorescent intensity of individual cells to argue that plasmid segregation and replication dynamics are inherently stochastic processes. Finally, using a microchemostat, we track thousands of cells in time to reconstruct bacterial lineages and evaluate the allele frequency distributions that emerge in response to a range of selective pressures.
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Affiliation(s)
- J C R Hernandez-Beltran
- Laboratorio de Biología Sintética y de Sistemas, Centro de Ciencias Genómicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 62210 Cuernavaca, Mexico
| | - J Rodríguez-Beltrán
- Department of Microbiology, Hospital Universitario Ramon y Cajal (IRYCIS), Madrid, Spain
| | - A San Millán
- Department of Microbiology, Hospital Universitario Ramon y Cajal (IRYCIS), Madrid, Spain
| | - R Peña-Miller
- Laboratorio de Biología Sintética y de Sistemas, Centro de Ciencias Genómicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 62210 Cuernavaca, Mexico.
| | - A Fuentes-Hernández
- Laboratorio de Biología Sintética y de Sistemas, Centro de Ciencias Genómicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 62210 Cuernavaca, Mexico.
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Rodriguez-Beltran J, Hernandez-Beltran JCR, DelaFuente J, Escudero JA, Fuentes-Hernandez A, MacLean RC, Peña-Miller R, San Millan A. Multicopy plasmids allow bacteria to escape from fitness trade-offs during evolutionary innovation. Nat Ecol Evol 2018; 2:873-881. [PMID: 29632354 PMCID: PMC6055991 DOI: 10.1038/s41559-018-0529-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 47] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/17/2017] [Accepted: 03/05/2018] [Indexed: 11/21/2022]
Abstract
Understanding the mechanisms governing innovation is a central element of evolutionary theory. Novel traits usually arise through mutations in existing genes, but trade-offs between new and ancestral protein functions are pervasive and constrain the evolution of innovation. Classical models posit that evolutionary innovation circumvents the constraints imposed by trade-offs through genetic amplifications, which provide functional redundancy. Bacterial multicopy plasmids provide a paradigmatic example of genetic amplification, yet their role in evolutionary innovation remains largely unexplored. Here, we reconstructed the evolution of a new trait encoded in a multicopy plasmid using TEM-1 β-lactamase as a model system. Through a combination of theory and experimentation, we show that multicopy plasmids promote the coexistence of ancestral and novel traits for dozens of generations, allowing bacteria to escape the evolutionary constraints imposed by trade-offs. Our results suggest that multicopy plasmids are excellent platforms for evolutionary innovation, contributing to explain their extreme abundance in bacteria.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | - Javier DelaFuente
- Department of Microbiology, Hospital Universitario Ramon y Cajal (IRYCIS), Madrid, Spain
| | - Jose A Escudero
- Departamento de Sanidad Animal and VISAVET, Facultad de Veterinaria, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
| | | | | | - Rafael Peña-Miller
- Centro de Ciencias Genómicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Morelos, Mexico
| | - Alvaro San Millan
- Department of Microbiology, Hospital Universitario Ramon y Cajal (IRYCIS), Madrid, Spain.
- Network Research Center for Epidemiology and Public Health (CIBER-ESP), Madrid, Spain.
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