Evolutionary Coupling of Flagellar Motility and Type VI Secretion Systems Across Bacteria

T6SS presence is strongly linked to flagellar motility across 11,365 bacterial genomes, with phylogenetic modeling supporting dependent evolution of FliC and T6SS.

• Why it matters: Motility and antagonistic traits likely interact during competition in spatial environments, but broad evolutionary coupling between these systems across bacteria was unclear.
• What they did: The study analyzed 11,365 genomes from the bacterial Tree of Life, annotated flagellar, T6SS, and bacteriocin components, and used phylogenetic comparative models (including BayesTraits) plus transition-rate analyses.
• The result: T6SS gain is strongly biased toward motile lineages, while bacteriocins show no detectable evolutionary coupling with motility, implying distinct macroevolutionary associations.

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