Phage-bacterial interaction. Credit: Alex Betts.

Scientists have long debated the dynamic form of coevolution between hosts and their parasites. In a paper in PNAS, SFI External Professor Michael Hochberg and collaborators examined co-evolution patterns among the host bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa and a panel of bacteriophages (viruses that infect and replicate within a bacterium).

Their study finds that pathogen identity affected coevolutionary dynamics and suggests that these dynamics are associated with the nature of the receptor used by the viruses for infection, they say.

"Our results shed light on the coevolutionary process in simple communities and have practical application in the control of bacterial pathogens through the evolutionary training of phages, increasing their virulence and efficacy as therapeutics or disinfectants," the authors write.

Read the paper in PNAS (June 24, 2014)