Rearrangement hotspot (Rhs) and related YD-peptide repeat proteins are widely distributed in bacteria and eukaryotes, but their functions are poorly understood. Here, we show that Gram-negative Rhs proteins and the distantly related wall-associated protein A (WapA) from Gram-positive bacteria mediate intercellular competition. Rhs and WapA carry polymorphic C-terminal toxin domains (Rhs-CT/WapA-CT), which are deployed to inhibit the growth of neighboring cells. These systems also encode sequence-diverse immunity proteins (RhsI/WapI) that specifically neutralize cognate toxins to protect rhs + /wapA + cells from autoinhibition. RhsA and RhsB from Dickeya dadantii 3937 carry nuclease domains that degrade target cell DNA. D. dadantii 3937 rhs genes do not encode secretion signal sequences but are linked to hemolysin-coregulated protein and valine-glycine repeat protein G genes from type VI secretion systems. Valine-glycine repeat protein G is required for inhibitor cell function, suggesting that Rhs may be exported from D. dadantii 3937 through a type VI secretion mechanism. In contrast, WapA proteins from Bacillus subtilis strains appear to be exported through the general secretory pathway and deliver a variety of tRNase toxins into neighboring target cells. These findings demonstrate that YD-repeat proteins from phylogenetically diverse bacteria share a common function in contact-dependent growth inhibition.

It has become increasingly clear that low levels of antibiotics present in many environments can select for resistant bacteria, yet the evolutionary pathways for resistance development during exposure to low amounts of antibiotics remain poorly defined. Here we show that Salmonella enterica exposed to sub-MIC levels of streptomycin evolved high-level resistance via novel mechanisms that are different from those observed during lethal selections. During lethal selection only rpsL mutations are found, whereas at sub-MIC selection resistance is generated by several small-effect resistance mutations that combined confer high-level resistance via three different mechanisms: (i) alteration of the ribosomal RNA target (gidB mutations), (ii) reduction in aminoglycoside uptake (cyoB, nuoG, and trkH mutations), and (iii) induction of the aminoglycoside-modifying enzyme AadA (znuA mutations). These results demonstrate how the strength of the selective pressure influences evolutionary trajectories and that even weak selective pressures can cause evolution of high-level resistance.

Gene loss by deletion is a common evolutionary process in bacteria, as exemplified by bacteria with small genomes that have evolved from bacteria with larger genomes by reductive processes. The driving force(s) for genome reduction remains unclear, and here we examined the hypothesis that gene loss is selected because carriage of superfluous genes confers a fitness cost to the bacterium. In the bacterium Salmonella enterica, we measured deletion rates at 11 chromosomal positions and the fitness effects of several spontaneous deletions. Deletion rates varied over 200-fold between different regions with the replication terminus region showing the highest rates. Approximately 25% of the examined deletions caused an increase in fitness under one or several growth conditions, and after serial passage of wild-type bacteria in rich medium for 1,000 generations we observed fixation of deletions that substantially increased bacterial fitness when reconstructed in a non-evolved bacterium. These results suggest that selection could be a significant driver of gene loss and reductive genome evolution.

Bacterial evolution toward endosymbiosis with eukaryotic cells is associated with extensive bacterial genome reduction and loss of metabolic and regulatory capabilities. Here we examined the rate and process of genome reduction in the bacterium Salmonella enterica by a serial passage experimental evolution procedure. The initial rate of DNA loss was estimated to be 0.05 bp per chromosome per generation for a WT bacterium and Ϸ50-fold higher for a mutS mutant defective in methyl-directed DNA mismatch repair. The endpoints were identified for seven chromosomal deletions isolated during serial passage and in two separate genetic selections. Deletions ranged in size from 1 to 202 kb, and most of them were not associated with DNA repeats, indicating that they were formed via RecA-independent recombination events. These results suggest that extensive genome reduction can occur on a short evolutionary time scale and that RecA-dependent homologous recombination only plays a limited role in this process of jettisoning superfluous DNA. bacterial evolution ͉ genome reduction ͉ serial passage M ost bacterial genomes are continuously changing over time with respect to gene content and size, and several processes including deletion, duplication, and lateral gene transfer contribute to this genome evolution (1-4). Bacterial endosymbionts generally have small genomes, and they were probably derived by a reductive process from ancestral free-living bacteria with larger genomes (5, 6). The reduction of genome size is facilitated by the absence of selection for many bacterial functions (e.g., growth factor biosynthesis) due to the availability and utilization of metabolites provided within the host cell. The combination of the presence of population bottlenecks and the absence of lateral gene transfer allows nonselected and weakly selected genes to be inactivated by random mutation and subsequently lost by deletion. This evolutionary scenario has been convincingly inferred from genomic comparisons of free-living bacteria and obligate intracellular bacteria (6-8) and is thought to be responsible for the high numbers of pseudogenes that have been identified in the genome sequences of some of the more specialized bacterial pathogens (9-11). However, the speed and mechanisms responsible for reductive evolution are poorly defined. Furthermore, the genetic factors that constrain the tempo and mode of such reductive evolution have not been determined, and these could include the availability of functional recombination machinery, recombination substrates, and the number and distribution of essential genes. Materials and MethodsSerial Passage. Bacteria were propagated clonally to avoid lateral gene transfer with a supply of biosynthetic end products such as amino acids, vitamins, bases, and cofactors (hematin agar plates: GC-agar base from Oxoid, Basingstoke, U.K., supplemented with haemoglobin, isovitox, and iron). Slow-growing mutants were allowed to fix in the population by reducing effective population size. This reduction was achieve...