Antagonism correlates with metabolic similarity in diverse bacteria

• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1706016114
• Publication Date: 2017-09-19T01:00:20Z
• Authors: Jakob Russel; Henriette L. Røder; Jonas S. Madsen; Mette Burmølle; Søren J. Sørensen
• Keywords: Evolution, Molecular; 0301 basic medicine; 03 medical and health sciences; Bacteria; Carbon; Genome, Bacterial; Phylogeny

Significance Diverse species from all over the bacterial tree of life produce antibiotics to limit the growth of competitors and thereby enhance their resource availability. Here we examined the pairwise inhibition between bacterial species from natural settings. We find that bacteria mainly inhibit the growth of metabolically similar and evolutionary related species, in line with Darwin’s age old competition-relatedness hypothesis. We further find that inhibiting the growth of other species is associated with a generalist lifestyle, suggesting a trade-off between specialists efficiently growing on few resources and generalists who are able to use many resources but have to inhibit the specialists to obtain them.