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Title: Tuning fresh: radiation through rewiring of central metabolism in streamlined bacteria

Journal Article · · The ISME Journal
 [1]; ORCiD logo [1];  [1];  [1];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [5];  [6];  [7]; ORCiD logo [4];  [3];  [1]
  1. Uppsala Univ. (Sweden). Dept. of Ecology and Genetics
  2. Uppsala Univ. (Sweden). Dept. of Ecology and Genetics, Uppsala Multidisciplinary Center for Advanced Computational Science
  3. USDOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI), Walnut Creek, CA (United States)
  4. Bigelow Lab. for Ocean Sciences, East Boothbay, ME (United States)
  5. Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (Spain). IRB-BSC Program in Computational Biology; Catalan Inst. of Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA), Barcelona (Spain)
  6. Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States). Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Dept. of Bacteriology
  7. Uppsala Univ. (Sweden). Dept. of Cellular and Molecular Biology

Most free-living planktonic cells are streamlined and in spite of their limitations in functional flexibility, their vast populations have radiated into a wide range of aquatic habitats. Here we compared the metabolic potential of subgroups in the Alphaproteobacteria lineage SAR11 adapted to marine and freshwater habitats. Our results suggest that the successful leap from marine to freshwaters in SAR11 was accompanied by a loss of several carbon degradation pathways and a rewiring of the central metabolism. Examples for these are C1 and methylated compounds degradation pathways, the Entner-Doudouroff pathway, the glyoxylate shunt and anapleuretic carbon fixation being absent from the freshwater genomes. Evolutionary reconstruc tions further suggest that the metabolic modules making up these important freshwater metabolic traits were already present in the gene pool of ancestral marine SAR11 populations. The loss of the glyoxylate shunt had already occurred in the common ancestor of the freshwater subgroup and its closest marine relatives, suggesting that the adaptation to freshwater was a gradual process. Furthermore, our results indicate rapid evolution of TRAP transporters in the freshwater clade involved in the uptake of low molecular weight carboxylic acids. We propose that such gradual tuning of metabolic pathways and transporters toward locally available organic substrates is linked to the formation of subgroups within the SAR11 clade and that this process was critical for the freshwater clade to find and fix an adaptive phenotype.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
1379540
Journal Information:
The ISME Journal, Vol. 10, Issue 8; ISSN 1751-7362
Publisher:
Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 27 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Bacterial succession along a sediment porewater gradient at Lake Neusiedl in Austria journal August 2019
Hidden in plain sight—highly abundant and diverse planktonic freshwater Chloroflexi text January 2018
Model communities hint at promiscuous metabolic linkages between ubiquitous free-living freshwater bacteria text January 2019
Cultivation and genomics of the first freshwater SAR11 (LD12) isolate journal March 2018
Model Communities Hint at Promiscuous Metabolic Linkages between Ubiquitous Free-Living Freshwater Bacteria journal May 2018
Hidden in plain sight—highly abundant and diverse planktonic freshwater Chloroflexi journal October 2018
Wide Distribution of Phage That Infect Freshwater SAR11 Bacteria journal October 2019
Freshwater carbon and nutrient cycles revealed through reconstructed population genomes journal January 2018
Niche-specific metabolic adaptation in biotrophic and necrotrophic oomycetes is manifested in differential use of nutrients, variation in gene content, and enzyme evolution journal April 2019
Repeated evolutionary transitions of flavobacteria from marine to non-marine habitats: Repeated evolutionary transitions journal January 2019
Correction for Props et al., “Gene Expansion and Positive Selection as Bacterial Adaptations to Oligotrophic Conditions” journal December 2020
Genome‐resolved viral and cellular metagenomes revealed potential key virus‐host interactions in a deep freshwater lake journal September 2019
Prokaryotic Population Dynamics and Viral Predation in a Marine Succession Experiment Using Metagenomics journal December 2019
Gene Expansion and Positive Selection as Bacterial Adaptations to Oligotrophic Conditions journal February 2019
Metabolic evolution and the self-organization of ecosystems journal March 2017
Competition and niche separation of pelagic bacteria in freshwater habitats text January 2017
Genomes from uncultivated prokaryotes: a comparison of metagenome-assembled and single-amplified genomes journal September 2018
Competition and niche separation of pelagic bacteria in freshwater habitats: Niches of freshwater bacterioplankton journal May 2017