Publications by authors named "Daniel Huelgas-Mendez"
Arguably, the greatest threat to bacteria is phages. It is often assumed that those bacteria that escape phage infection have mutated or utilized phage-defence systems; however, another possibility is that a subpopulation forms the dormant persister state in a manner similar to that demonstrated for bacterial cells undergoing nutritive, oxidative, and antibiotic stress. Persister cells do not undergo mutation and survive lethal conditions by ceasing growth transiently.
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- Social cheating involves the use of costly public goods, such as exoproteases, which some bacteria exploit without contributing themselves, specifically observed in Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
- In the environmental strain ID4365, nonexoprotease producers exhibit social cheating behaviors due to a mutation preventing LasR expression, leading to population collapses during continuous growth in casein.
- The study reveals that inducing a prophage in ID4365 during growth may heighten the costs of social cheating, ultimately contributing to the population's decline and showcasing the role of temperate phages in these dynamics.
Bacteriophages are the most abundant biological entity on the planet, having pivotal roles in bacterial ecology, animal and plant health, and in the biogeochemical cycles. Although, in principle, phages are simple entities that replicate at the expense of their bacterial hosts, due the importance of bacteria in all aspects of nature, they have the potential to influence and modify diverse processes, either in subtle or profound ways. Traditionally, the main application of bacteriophages is phage therapy, which is their utilization to combat and help to clear bacterial infections, from enteric diseases, to skin infections, chronic infections, sepsis, .
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