Month: September 2022

DRIVING FORCE. "We present data supporting the hypothesis that viral genes and viral activity generate genetic variability of prokaryotes and are a driving force for ecological functioning and evolutionary change." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1462-2920.2003.00539.x/full View in LinkedIn

VERY RECENT CHANGE. "When the human genome was first published, the suggestion that it contained bacterial genes was controversial." (2001). A reminder that scientific hypotheses can evolve rapidly. New mindset today. https://lnkd.in/eaMwmW6 View in LinkedIn

"HORIZONTAL GENE TRANSFER has happened between all kinds of living things throughout the history of life on the planet – not just between species, but also between different kingdoms of life. Bacterial genes end up in plants; fungal genes wind up in animals; snake and frog genes find their way into cows and bats. It seems that the genome of just about every modern species is something of a mosaic constructed with genes borrowed from many different forms of life." https://aeon.co/essays/genes-that-jump-species-does-this-shake-the-tree-of-life View in LinkedIn

GENETIC SWAP-MEET. "When Chris Smillie and Mark Smith from MIT looked at the genomes of over 2,200 species of bacteria, they found 10,000 genes that had been recently swapped. These genes were more than 99 percent identical, even though they came from bacteria that were distantly related." https://lnkd.in/etuiYJg View in LinkedIn

ACROSS TIME AND SPACE. "We observe [gene transfer] across the Tree of Life, meaning that bacteria separated by hundreds of millions or billions of years of evolution are engaged in HGT...Furthermore, distantly related bacteria that inhabited the same environment had higher levels of gene exchange compared with closely related bacteria that inhabited different environments." https://lnkd.in/e8222ss View in LinkedIn

"HORIZONTAL GENE TRANSFER (HGT) is thought to play an important role in the evolution of species and innovation of genomes. Here, we present a method of identifying HGT events within a given protein family and estimate the global extent of HGT in all curated protein domain families (≈8,000) listed in the Pfam database." https://lnkd.in/eawF3Dn View in LinkedIn

BRILLIANT REVIEW. "Shuffling and disruption of operons and horizontal gene transfer are major contributions to the new, dynamic view of prokaryotic evolution. Under the 'selfish operon' hypothesis, operons are viewed as mobile genetic entities that are constantly disseminated via horizontal gene transfer, although their retention could be favored by the advantage of coregulation of functionally linked genes." https://lnkd.in/eRYS-TZ View in LinkedIn

"HORIZONTAL transfer of entire operons is the most likely explanation for most of the findings of co-localized 'alien' genes in a genome." https://lnkd.in/eRYS-TZ View in LinkedIn

"INTRAGENOMIC plasticity and inter-species horizontal mobility of operons are thought to be important facets of prokaryotic genome evolution." https://lnkd.in/eRYS-TZ View in LinkedIn

MOSAIC OPERONS. "Two evolutionary scenarios for the origin of such mosaic operons are conceivable. The first involves de novo assembly of operons, in part from genes acquired via HGT, whereas the second one postulates in situ xenologous displacement of genes within a resident operon." https://lnkd.in/eRYS-TZ View in LinkedIn