A limit on the evolutionary rescue of an Antarctic bacterium from rising temperatures

• Main Authors: Toll-Riera, Macarena, Olombrada, Miriam, Castro-Giner, Francesc, Wagner, Andreas
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: American Association for the Advancement of Science 2022
• Subjects: Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies; Evolution in Action: From Genomes to Ecosystems; 570 Life sciences; biology; 590 Animals (Zoology); Multidisciplinary; Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/227923/; https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/227923/1/Toll_Riera_manuscript_ZORA.pdf; https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/227923/2/Toll_Riera_supplementary_materials_revised.pdf; https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/227923/13/sciadv.abk3511.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abk3511

Climate change is gradual, but it can also cause brief extreme heat waves that can exceed the upper thermal limit of any one organism. To study the evolutionary potential of upper thermal tolerance, we evolved the cold-adapted Antarctic bacterium Pseudoalteromonas haloplanktis to survive at 30°C, beyond its ancestral thermal limit. This high-temperature adaptation occurred rapidly and in multiple populations. It involved genomic changes that occurred in a highly parallel fashion and mitigated the effects of protein misfolding. However, it also confronted a physiological limit, because populations failed to grow beyond 30°C. Our experiments aimed to facilitate evolutionary rescue by using a small organism with large populations living at temperatures several degrees below their upper thermal limit. Larger organisms with smaller populations and living at temperatures closer to their upper thermal tolerances are even more likely to go extinct during extreme heat waves.