2010 journal article
Adaptation in a Mouse Colony Monoassociated with Escherichia coli K-12 for More than 1,000 Days
APPLIED AND ENVIRONMENTAL MICROBIOLOGY, 76(14), 4655–4663.
MeSH headings : Animals; Escherichia coli K12 / genetics; Escherichia coli K12 / growth & development; Gastrointestinal Tract / microbiology; Longitudinal Studies; Mice; Restriction Mapping
TL;DR:
The results suggest that monoassociated mice might be used as a tool for characterizing niches occupied by the intestinal flora and potentially as a method of targeting the evolution of bacteria for applications in biotechnology.
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13. Climate Action
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Added: August 6, 2018
ABSTRACT Although mice associated with a single bacterial species have been used to provide a simple model for analysis of host-bacteria relationships, bacteria have been shown to display adaptability when grown in a variety of novel environments. In this study, changes associated with the host-bacterium relationship in mice monoassociated with Escherichia coli K-12 over a period of 1,031 days were evaluated. After 80 days, phenotypic diversification of E. coli was observed, with the colonizing bacteria having a broader distribution of growth rates in the laboratory than the parent E. coli . After 1,031 days, which included three generations of mice and an estimated 20,000 generations of E. coli , the initially homogeneous bacteria colonizing the mice had evolved to have widely different growth rates on agar, a potential decrease in tendency for spontaneous lysis in vivo , and an increased tendency for spontaneous lysis in vitro . Importantly, mice at the end of the experiment were colonized at an average density of bacteria that was more than 3-fold greater than mice colonized on day 80. Evaluation of selected isolates on day 1,031 revealed unique restriction endonuclease patterns and differences between isolates in expression of more than 10% of the proteins identified by two-dimensional electrophoresis, suggesting complex changes underlying the evolution of diversity during the experiment. These results suggest that monoassociated mice might be used as a tool for characterizing niches occupied by the intestinal flora and potentially as a method of targeting the evolution of bacteria for applications in biotechnology.