Abstract
Phenotypic plasticity enables individuals to develop different phenotypes in a changing environment and promotes adaptive evolution. Genome-wide association study (GWAS) facilitates the study of the genetic basis of bacterial phenotypes, and provides a new opportunity for bacterial phenotypic plasticity research. To investigate the relationship between growth plasticity and genotype in bacteria, 41 Staphylococcus aureus strains, including 29 vancomycin-intermediate S. aureus (VISA) strains, were inoculated in the absence or presence of vancomycin for 48 h. Growth curves and maximum growth rates revealed that strains with the same minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) showed different levels of plasticity in response to vancomycin. A bivariate GWAS was performed to map single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with growth plasticity. In total, 227 SNPs were identified from 14 time points, while 15 high-frequency SNPs were mapped to different annotated genes. The P-values and growth variations between the two cultures suggest that non-coding region (SNP 738836), ebh (SNP 1394043), drug transporter (SNP 264897), and pepV (SNP 1775112) play important roles in the growth plasticity of S. aureus. Our study provides an alternative strategy for dissecting the adaptive growth of S. aureus in vancomycin and highlights the feasibility of bivariate GWAS in bacterial phenotypic plasticity research.
Highlights
Phenotypic plasticity reflects the adaptation of organisms and provides the ability of a given individual to develop different traits in different environments
Taking S. aureus as an example, we investigated the associations between growth plasticity and single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)
Our results suggest that under vancomycin pressure, growth plasticity varies in different strains even with the same minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC), and there is no direct relationship between the MIC and growth rate
Summary
Phenotypic plasticity reflects the adaptation of organisms and provides the ability of a given individual to develop different traits in different environments. Phenotypic plasticity was first applied to plants and quickly penetrated into various disciplines (Corona et al, 2016; Savvides et al, 2017). A given genotype cannot be well adapted to all environments, and the response of genetic variance to environmental pressure may be very low (Anurag, 2001). Phenotypic plasticity enables bacteria to counteract the threat of the environment to growth and propagation (Chevin and Hoffmann, 2017). Bacteria in a changeable environment show greater adaptation to a novel condition (Opijnen et al, 2016). Antarctic lake strains have better phenotypic plasticity than ancestral polar sea strains at high salinities (Rengefors et al, 2015)
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