Well-temperate phage: Optimal bet-hedging against local environmental collapses
Abstract
Upon infection of their bacterial hosts temperate phages must chose between lysogenic and lytic developmental strategies. Here we apply the game-theoretic bet-hedging strategy introduced by Kelly to derive the optimal lysogenic fraction of the total population of phages as a function of frequency and intensity of environmental downturns affecting the lytic subpopulation. “Well-temperate” phage from our title is characterized by the best long-term population growth rate. We show that it is realized when the lysogenization frequency is approximately equal to the probability of lytic population collapse. We further predict the existence of sharp boundaries in system’s environmental, ecological, and biophysical parameters separating the regions where this temperate strategy is optimal from those dominated by purely virulent or dormant (purely lysogenic) strategies. We show that the virulent strategy works best for phages with large diversity of hosts, and access to multiple independent environments reachable by diffusion. Conversely, progressively more temperate or even dormant strategies are favored in the environments, that are subject to frequent and severe temporal downturns.
- Authors:
-
- Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
- Univ. of Copenhagen, Copenhagen (Denmark)
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1213376
- Report Number(s):
- BNL-108254-2015-JA
Journal ID: ISSN 2045-2322; R&D Project: PM-031; KP1601040
- Grant/Contract Number:
- SC00112704
- Resource Type:
- Journal Article: Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Name:
- Scientific Reports
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Volume: 5; Journal Issue: 8; Journal ID: ISSN 2045-2322
- Publisher:
- Nature Publishing Group
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES; computational models; information theory and computation
Citation Formats
Maslov, Sergei, and Sneppen, Kim. Well-temperate phage: Optimal bet-hedging against local environmental collapses. United States: N. p., 2015.
Web. doi:10.1038/srep10523.
Maslov, Sergei, & Sneppen, Kim. Well-temperate phage: Optimal bet-hedging against local environmental collapses. United States. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep10523
Maslov, Sergei, and Sneppen, Kim. 2015.
"Well-temperate phage: Optimal bet-hedging against local environmental collapses". United States. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep10523. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1213376.
@article{osti_1213376,
title = {Well-temperate phage: Optimal bet-hedging against local environmental collapses},
author = {Maslov, Sergei and Sneppen, Kim},
abstractNote = {Upon infection of their bacterial hosts temperate phages must chose between lysogenic and lytic developmental strategies. Here we apply the game-theoretic bet-hedging strategy introduced by Kelly to derive the optimal lysogenic fraction of the total population of phages as a function of frequency and intensity of environmental downturns affecting the lytic subpopulation. “Well-temperate” phage from our title is characterized by the best long-term population growth rate. We show that it is realized when the lysogenization frequency is approximately equal to the probability of lytic population collapse. We further predict the existence of sharp boundaries in system’s environmental, ecological, and biophysical parameters separating the regions where this temperate strategy is optimal from those dominated by purely virulent or dormant (purely lysogenic) strategies. We show that the virulent strategy works best for phages with large diversity of hosts, and access to multiple independent environments reachable by diffusion. Conversely, progressively more temperate or even dormant strategies are favored in the environments, that are subject to frequent and severe temporal downturns.},
doi = {10.1038/srep10523},
url = {https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1213376},
journal = {Scientific Reports},
issn = {2045-2322},
number = 8,
volume = 5,
place = {United States},
year = {Tue Jun 02 00:00:00 EDT 2015},
month = {Tue Jun 02 00:00:00 EDT 2015}
}
Web of Science
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