{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,10,6]],"date-time":"2026-10-06T12:39:37Z","timestamp":1791290377190,"version":"4.3.0"},"reference-count":20,"publisher":"Oxford University Press (OUP)","issue":"1","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2024,1,15]],"date-time":"2024-01-15T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1705276800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":826,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"},{"start":{"date-parts":[[2021,10,11]],"date-time":"2021-10-11T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1633910400000},"content-version":"tdm","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0"},{"start":{"date-parts":[[2021,10,11]],"date-time":"2021-10-11T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1633910400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["41877412"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["41877412"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"2115 Talent Development Program of China Agricultural University Scholarship of the \u2018National Thousand (Young) Talents Program\u2019 of China"},{"name":"Eawag Discretionary Funds, Category: SEED"},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["41877412"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["41877412"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["41877412"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["41877412"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"2115 Talent Development Program of China Agricultural University Scholarship of the \u2018National Thousand (Young) Talents Program\u2019 of China"},{"name":"Eawag Discretionary Funds, Category: SEED"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["link.springer.com"],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":[],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2021,12,1]]},"abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract<\/jats:title>\n               <jats:p>Conjugative plasmids bestow important traits to microbial communities, such as virulence, antibiotic resistance, pollutant biotransformation, and biotechnology-relevant functions. While the biological mechanisms and determinants of plasmid conjugation are well established, the underlying physical and ecological driving forces remain unclear. Microbial communities often inhabit unsaturated environments, such as soils and host surfaces (e.g., skin, teeth, leaves, roots), where water evaporation and associated small-scale hydrodynamic processes frequently occur at numerous air-water and solid-water interfaces. Here, we hypothesized that evaporation can induce water flows with profound effects on the spatial distribution and surface deposition of cells, and consequently on the extent of plasmid conjugation. Using droplet experiments with an antibiotic resistance-encoding plasmid, we show that evaporation-induced water flows reduce cell-cell distances and significantly increase the extent of plasmid conjugation. Counterintuitively, we found that evaporation results in lower expression levels of conjugation-related genes. This negative relationship between the extent of plasmid conjugation and the expression of conjugation-related genes could be attributed to increased conjugation efficiency during evaporation. This study provides new insights into the physical and ecological determinants of plasmid conjugation, with important implications for understanding the spread and proliferation of plasmid-encoded traits.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1038\/s43705-021-00057-5","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2021,10,11]],"date-time":"2021-10-11T12:09:23Z","timestamp":1633954163000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":22,"title":["Evaporation-induced hydrodynamics promote conjugation-mediated plasmid transfer in microbial populations"],"prefix":"10.1093","volume":"1","author":[{"given":"Chujin","family":"Ruan","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"College of Land Science and Technology, China Agricultural University , 100193 Beijing, China"},{"name":"Department of Environmental Microbiology, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag) , 8600 D\u00fcbendorf, Switzerland"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Josep","family":"Ramoneda","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Environmental Microbiology, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag) , 8600 D\u00fcbendorf, Switzerland"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-3093-9866","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Guowei","family":"Chen","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Civil and Hydraulic Engineering, Hefei University of Technology , Hefei, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-6728-8462","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"David R","family":"Johnson","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Environmental Microbiology, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag) , 8600 D\u00fcbendorf, 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