Metabolic adaptation to vitamin auxotrophy by leaf-associated bacteria

Auxotrophs are unable to synthesize all the metabolites essential for their metabolism and rely on others to provide them. They have been intensively studied in laboratory-generated and -evolved mutants, but emergent adaptation mechanisms to auxotrophy have not been systematically addressed. Here, w...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The ISME Journal 2022-12, Vol.16 (12), p.2712-2724
Main Authors: Ryback, Birgitta, Bortfeld-Miller, Miriam, Vorholt, Julia A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
101/58
631/326
631/326/2565/855
Adaptation
Auxotrophs
Auxotrophy
Bacteria
Bacteria - metabolism
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Biotin
Biotin - metabolism
Carbon compounds
Coenzymes
Dietary supplements
Ecology
Evolutionary Biology
Life Sciences
Metabolism
Metabolites
Microbial Ecology
Microbial Genetics and Genomics
Microbiology
Plant Leaves - metabolism
Prototrophs
Species richness
Strains (organisms)
Thiamine
Thiamine - metabolism
Vitamin A
Vitamin B Complex - metabolism
Vitamin K
Vitamins
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Summary:Auxotrophs are unable to synthesize all the metabolites essential for their metabolism and rely on others to provide them. They have been intensively studied in laboratory-generated and -evolved mutants, but emergent adaptation mechanisms to auxotrophy have not been systematically addressed. Here, we investigated auxotrophies in bacteria isolated from Arabidopsis thaliana leaves and found that up to half of the strains have auxotrophic requirements for biotin, niacin, pantothenate and/or thiamine. We then explored the genetic basis of auxotrophy as well as traits that co-occurred with vitamin auxotrophy. We found that auxotrophic strains generally stored coenzymes with the capacity to grow exponentially for 1–3 doublings without vitamin supplementation; however, the highest observed storage was for biotin, which allowed for 9 doublings in one strain. In co-culture experiments, we demonstrated vitamin supply to auxotrophs, and found that auxotrophic strains maintained higher species richness than prototrophs upon external supplementation with vitamins. Extension of a consumer-resource model predicted that auxotrophs can utilize carbon compounds provided by other organisms, suggesting that auxotrophic strains benefit from metabolic by-products beyond vitamins.
ISSN:1751-7362
1751-7370
DOI:10.1038/s41396-022-01303-x