Phenotypic stochasticity prevents lytic bacteriophage population from extinction during bacterial stationary phase

It is generally thought that the adsorption rate of a bacteriophage correlates positively with fitness, but this view neglects that most phages rely only on exponentially growing bacteria for productive infections. Thus, phages must cope with the environmental stochasticity that is their hosts’ physiological states. If lysogeny is one alternative, it is unclear how strictly lytic phages can survive the host stationary phase. Three scenarios may explain their maintenance: (1) pseudolysogeny, (2) diversified or (3) conservative bet-hedging. In order to better understand how a strictly lytic phage survives the stationary phase of its host, and how phage adsorption rate impacts this survival, we challenged two strictly lytic phage λ, differing in their adsorption rates, with stationary phase Escherichia coli cells. Our results showed that, pseudolysogeny was not responsible for phage survival and that, contrary to our expectation, high adsorption rate was not more detrimental during station...