Month: September 2022

"THE MOBILOME is the total of all mobile genetic elements in a genome. Elements that can move within the genome (transposable elements) are the major constituents of the mobilome in eukaryotes. In prokaryotes, however, mobile genetic elements that can move between genomes, like prophages and plasmids, are also an important part of the mobilome." https://lnkd.in/ecCtYNF View in LinkedIn

SMART FLOTSAM AND JETSAM in a sea of protoplasm. "Mobile Genetic Elements, "MGEs such as viruses, plasmids, membrane vesicles, gene transfer agents (GTAs), transposons and transpovirons, which collectively represent the mobilome." Diverse, potent and in motion. https://lnkd.in/eixwewC View in LinkedIn

MOBILE GENETIC ELEMENTS (MGEs) "can be roughly grouped into four major classes: transposable elements (TEs), plasmids, viruses, and self-splicing elements such as group I and II introns and inteins...viruses constitute a part of the mobilome." https://lnkd.in/ejST9YZ View in LinkedIn

"PROVIROPHAGES AND TRANSPOVIRINS as the diverse mobilome of giant viruses. A distinct class of infectious agents, the virophages that infect giant viruses of the Mimiviridae family, has been recently described...and a member of a previously unknown class of mobile genetic elements, the transpovirons." The list goes on. https://lnkd.in/ejST9YZ View in LinkedIn

FITNESS COST. "Conjugative plasmids are extra-chromosomal DNA elements that are capable of horizontal transmission and are found in many natural isolated bacteria. Although plasmids may carry beneficial genes to their bacterial host, they may also cause a fitness cost." https://lnkd.in/eJNVq3D View in LinkedIn

BACTERIAL SEX. "Not only do plasmids replicate, copying across to a daughter cell when a bacterium divides, but they can also pass between unrelated bacteria through mechanisms such as cell-to-cell contact or a 'bridging connection' in a process called 'conjugation' – which has been described as the bacterial equivalent of sex." https://lnkd.in/eNHPm6b View in LinkedIn

GENERATIONAL SURVIVAL. "To be maintained across generations of bacterial cells, plasmids must ensure that they replicate at least once during the life cycle of their host. As a result, most plasmids have evolved systems to enable and control their replication." https://lnkd.in/e8wKCHY View in LinkedIn

CRITICAL STEPS. "Not only must plasmids secure their replication, they must also ensure that, once replicated, the plasmids will be split in the daughter cells in such a way that each daughter contains at least one plasmid copy." https://lnkd.in/e8wKCHY View in LinkedIn

DIRECT INTERACTION. "Many plasmids are incompatible with each other, meaning that when both are present in a given host, one of the two will fixate at the expense of the other. It is now known that such incompatibility is mainly due to mutual susceptibility to each plasmid’s replication and partition control system." https://lnkd.in/e8wKCHY View in LinkedIn

SOME SPECIFICITY. "Plasmids are known to be able to move from one bacterial strain to another. However, plasmids cannot move to and replicate in all strains." https://lnkd.in/e7i6Qm3 View in LinkedIn