RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Accumulation of deleterious mutations during bacterial range expansions
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 093658
DO 10.1101/093658
A1 Lars Bosshard
A1 Isabelle Dupanloup
A1 Olivier Tenaillon
A1 Rémy Bruggmann
A1 Martin Ackermann
A1 Stephan Peischl
A1 Laurent Excoffier
YR 2016
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/12/13/093658.abstract
AB Recent theory predicts that the fitness of pioneer populations can decline when species expand their range, due to high rates of genetic drift on wave fronts making selection less efficient at purging deleterious variants. To test these predictions, we studied the fate of mutator bacteria expanding their range for 1650 generations on agar plates. In agreement with theory, we find that growth abilities of strains with a high mutation rate (HMR lines) decreased significantly over time, unlike strains with a lower mutation rate (LMR lines) that present 3-4 times fewer mutations. Estimation of the distribution of fitness effect (DFE) under a spatially explicit model reveals a mean negative effect for new mutations (-0.38%), but it suggests that both advantageous and deleterious mutations have accumulated during the experiment. Furthermore, we show that the fitness of HMR lines measured in different environments has decreased relative to the ancestor strain, whereas that of LMR lines remained unchanged. Our results thus suggest that successful expanding species are affected by deleterious mutations that accumulate during the expansion process, leading to a drastic impairment of their evolutionary potential.