And the preprint is out! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
We compared plasmid conjugation in liquid and on solid across 13 AMR plasmids with different types of conjugative pili.
To study responses to the PRD1 phage in simple two strain communities with the RP4 plasmid. Under conditions where opportunities for conjugation are limited, the plasmid rapidly adapts to phage through loss of conjugative ability and the phage has a transient suppressive effect.
This is our first paper of plasmid-dependent phage, with more papers coming soon. This project was a team effort, but I want to highlight the excellent work done by Daniel Cazares and Eliza Rayner.
Interestingly, the phage resistance mutations that we observed in our experiments are quite common in IncP plasmids, suggesting that plasmid-depedent phage may impose quite an important barrier to conjugative plasmid transfer!
With greater opportunity for conjugation the phage supresses the plasmid more effectively. This is because of a complex trade-off between conjugative ability and phage resistance mediated by mutations in the conjugative apparatus.