Colonies of altruistic Escherichia coli lambda (green) and selfish E. coli HK97 (red), showing indentations in the red colonies where viral infection is spreading.DOMINIK REFARDTFor Escherichia coli, suicide can have fitness advantages in the face of deadly infection, even if the suicidal individual is surrounded by distantly related neighbors, according to new research published today (March 20) in The Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. Researchers demonstrated that suicide designed to limit a virus’s spread through bacteria can still benefit the suicidal strain even if some the bacterial cells saved by the voluntary death are not related.
“The important thing here is that programmed death outcompetes non programmed death at a level other than the single cell, and that’s remarkable,” evolutionary biologist Pierre Durand of Witwatersrand University in South Africa, who did not participate in the research, said in an email to The Scientist. The study directly addresses how programmed cell death, or apoptosis, can benefit a bacterial population, showing how the phenomenon “is an adaptation . . . exposing the way in which programmed suicide enhances life,” noted Durand.
Suicide appears to be common to many organisms, from bacteria that undergo programmed cell death to insects that leave their hive to die when infected with a pathogen. It’s thought that this behavior evolved because it can benefit close relatives of the ...
