Genesis of Ecto-symbiotic features based on Commensalistic Syntrophy

Abstract

The origin of eukaryotes and organellogenesis have been recognized as a major evolutionary transition and subject to in-depth studies. Acknowledging the fact that the initial interactions and conditions of cooperative behaviour between free-living single-celled organisms are widely debated, we narrow our scope to a single mechanism that could possibly have set-off multi-species associations. We hypothesize that the very first step in the evolution of such cooperative behaviour could be a single mutation in an ancestral symbiont genome that results in the formation of an ecto-commensalism with its obligate ancestral host. We investigate the ecological and evolutionary stability of inter-species microbial interactions with vertical transmissions as an association based on syntrophy (cross-feeding). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that a commensalistic model based on the syntrophy hypothesis is considered in the framework of coevolutionary dynamics and invadability by mutant phenotype into a monomorphic resident system.