2016/12/01 by Adam James Waite, Nicholas W. Frankel, Nicholas Frankel +5 · 77 citations
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Engineering · Neuroscience · #Adaptation (eye) #Biology #Chemotaxis #Computational biology #Evolutionary biology #Function (biology) #Gene #Gene Regulatory Network Analysis #Genetic diversity #Genetics #Genotype-phenotype distinction #Microfluidic and Bio-sensing Technologies #Molecular Communication and Nanonetworks #Neuroscience #Phenotype #Population #Receptor #Selection (genetic algorithm) #q-bio.CB #q-bio.PE
paper · pdf · doi:10.15252/msb.20167044
published in Molecular Systems Biology 12(12), 895 (Springer Nature)
openalex publication_date 2016/12/01 · arxiv created 2017/01/03 · arxiv updated 2017/01/04 · openalex created_date 2017/01/06 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Biological functions are typically performed by groups of cells that express predominantly the same genes, yet display a continuum of phenotypes. While it is known how one genotype can generate such non-genetic diversity, it remains unclear how different phenotypes contribute to the performance of biological function at the population level. We developed a microfluidic device to simultaneously measure the phenotype and chemotactic performance of tens of thousands of individual, freely swimming Escherichia coli as they climbed a gradient of attractant. We discovered that spatial structure spontaneously emerged from initially well-mixed wild-type populations due to non-genetic diversity. By manipulating the expression of key chemotaxis proteins, we established a causal relationship between protein expression, non-genetic diversity, and performance that was theoretically predicted. This approach generated a complete phenotype-to-performance map, in which we found a nonlinear regime. We used this map to demonstrate how changing the shape of a phenotypic distribution can have as large of an effect on collective performance as changing the mean phenotype, suggesting that selection could act on both during the process of adaptation.