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Applied and Environmental Microbiology, May 2006, p. 3615-3625, Vol. 72, No. 5
0099-2240/06/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/AEM.72.5.3615-3625.2006
Copyright © 2006, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Genetic Population Structure of the Soil Bacterium Myxococcus xanthus at the Centimeter Scale{dagger}

Michiel Vos* and Gregory J. Velicer

Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Spemannstrasse 35, 72076 Tübingen, Germany

Received 22 November 2005/ Accepted 6 March 2006

Myxococcus xanthus is a gram-negative soil bacterium best known for its remarkable life history of social swarming, social predation, and multicellular fruiting body formation. Very little is known about genetic diversity within this species or how social strategies might vary among neighboring strains at small spatial scales. To investigate the small-scale population structure of M. xanthus, 78 clones were isolated from a patch of soil (16 by 16 cm) in Tübingen, Germany. Among these isolates, 21 genotypes could be distinguished from a concatemer of three gene fragments: csgA (developmental C signal), fibA (extracellular matrix-associated zinc metalloprotease), and pilA (the pilin subunit of type IV pili). Accumulation curves showed that most of the diversity present at this scale was sampled. The pilA gene contains both conserved and highly variable regions, and two frequency-distribution tests provide evidence for balancing selection on this gene. The functional domains in the csgA gene were found to be conserved. Three instances of lateral gene transfer could be inferred from a comparison of individual gene phylogenies, but no evidence was found for linkage equilibrium, supporting the view that M. xanthus evolution is largely clonal. This study shows that M. xanthus is surrounded by a variety of distinct conspecifics in its natural soil habitat at a spatial scale at which encounters among genotypes are likely.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Spemannstrasse 35, 72076 Tübingen, Germany. Phone: 49 7071 601365. Fax: 49 7071 601305. E-mail: michiel.vos{at}tuebingen.mpg.de.

{dagger} Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://aem.asm.org/.

Applied and Environmental Microbiology, May 2006, p. 3615-3625, Vol. 72, No. 5
0099-2240/06/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/AEM.72.5.3615-3625.2006
Copyright © 2006, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.



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