{"doi":"10.1101/2022.08.09.503374","title":"Quorum-sensing- and type VI secretion-mediated spatio-temporal cell death drives genetic diversity in <i>Vibrio cholerae</i>","abstract":"Summary Bacterial colonies composed of genetically identical individuals can diversify to yield variant cells with distinct genotypes. Variant outgrowth manifests as sectors. Here, we show that Type 6 secretion system (T6SS)-driven cell death in Vibrio cholerae colonies imposes a selective pressure for the emergence of variant strains that can evade T6SS-mediated killing. T6SS-mediated cell death occurs in two distinct spatio-temporal phases, and each phase is driven by a particular T6SS toxin. The first phase is regulated by quorum sensing and drives sectoring. The second phase does not require the T6SS-injection machinery. Variant V. cholerae strains isolated from colony sectors encode mutated quorum-sensing components that confer growth advantages by suppressing T6SS-killing activity while simultaneously boosting T6SS-killing defenses. Our findings show that the T6SS can eliminate sibling cells suggesting a role in intra-specific antagonism. We propose that quorum-sensing-controlled T6SS-driven killing promotes V. cholerae genetic diversity, including in natural habitats and during disease.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2022,"id":310539,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9489,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":255935,"name":"Boyang Qin","orcid":"0000-0001-9421-7240","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":255941,"name":"Bonnie L. Bassler","orcid":"0000-0002-0043-746X","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":255938,"name":"Ameya A. Mashruwala","orcid":"0000-0001-5583-4174","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":53,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:33:19.712967Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}