TY - JOUR AU - Kottara, Anastasia AU - Hall, James P. J. AU - Harrison, Ellie AU - Brockhurst, Michael A. PY - 2016 DA - 2016/04/02 TI - Multi-host environments select for host-generalist conjugative plasmids JO - BMC Evolutionary Biology SP - 70 VL - 16 IS - 1 AB - Conjugative plasmids play an important role in bacterial evolution by transferring ecologically important genes within and between species. A key limit on interspecific horizontal gene transfer is plasmid host range. Here, we experimentally test the effect of single and multi-host environments on the host-range evolution of a large conjugative mercury resistance plasmid, pQBR57. Specifically, pQBR57 was conjugated between strains of a single host species, either P. fluorescens or P. putida, or alternating between P. fluorescens and P. putida. Crucially, the bacterial hosts were not permitted to evolve allowing us to observe plasmid evolutionary responses in isolation. SN - 1471-2148 UR - https://doi.org/10.1186/s12862-016-0642-z DO - 10.1186/s12862-016-0642-z ID - Kottara2016 ER -