ArticleBiology direct2009
Massive comparative genomic analysis reveals convergent evolution of specialized bacteria.
Article in Biology direct, 2009. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 129 papers.
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129 citing papers in PubMed, 223 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Vaginal dysbiosis and the potential of vaginal microbiome-directed therapeutics.Frontiers in microbiomes · 2024Review
- Delving into the lifestyle of Sundarban Wetland resident, biofilm producing, halotolerant Salinicoccus roseus: a comparative genomics-based intervention.BMC genomics · 2023Article
- De Novo Structural Variations of Escherichia coli Detected by Nanopore Long-Read Sequencing.Genome biology and evolution · 2023Article
- Metagenomic analysis of ecological niche overlap and community collapse in microbiome dynamics.Frontiers in microbiology · 2023Article
- How It All Begins: Bacterial Factors Mediating the Colonization of Invertebrate Hosts by Beneficial Symbionts.Microbiology and molecular biology reviews : MMBR · 2022Review
- Reduced and Nonreduced Genomes inmSystems · 2022Article
69 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundGenome size and gene content in bacteria are associated with their lifestyles. Obligate intracellular bacteria (i.e., mutualists and parasites) have small genomes that derived from larger free-living bacterial ancestors; however, the different steps of bacterial specialization from free-living to intracellular lifestyle have not been studied comprehensively. The growing number of available sequenced genomes makes it possible to perform a statistical comparative analysis of 317 genomes from bacteria with different lifestyles.
resultsCompared to free-living bacteria, host-dependent bacteria exhibit fewer rRNA genes, more split rRNA operons and fewer transcriptional regulators, linked to slower growth rates. We found a function-dependent and non-random loss of the same 100 orthologous genes in all obligate intracellular bacteria. Thus, we showed that obligate intracellular bacteria from different phyla are converging according to their lifestyle. Their specialization is an irreversible phenomenon characterized by translation modification and massive gene loss, including the loss of transcriptional regulators. Although both mutualists and parasites converge by genome reduction, these obligate intracellular bacteria have lost distinct sets of genes in the context of their specific host associations: mutualists have significantly more genes that enable nutrient provisioning whereas parasites have genes that encode Types II, IV, and VI secretion pathways.
conclusionOur findings suggest that gene loss, rather than acquisition of virulence factors, has been a driving force in the adaptation of parasites to eukaryotic cells. This comparative genomic analysis helps to explore the strategies by which obligate intracellular genomes specialize to particular host-associations and contributes to advance our knowledge about the mechanisms of bacterial evolution.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.