ArticlePLoS genetics2010
Evidence of selection upon genomic GC-content in bacteria.
Article in PLoS genetics, 2010. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 234 papers.
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Who cites it
234 citing papers in PubMed.
- Epistasis and co-adaptation in bacterial genome evolution.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2026Review
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- Spontaneous mutation rate and spectrum are modulated by organismal fitness.Science advances · 2026Article
- Review
- Constructing a "periodic table" of bacteria to map diversity in trait space.The ISME journal · 2026Article
- A pleuromutilin-ciprofloxacin hybrid exhibits potent activity againstFrontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2026Article
- Short-read genome skimming enables molecular barcoding of old myxomycete collections.IMA fungus · 2026Article
- Bacterial gene 5' ends have unusual mutation rates that can mislead tests of selection.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Unravelling mutation patterns in Extended-Spectrum β-Lactamases for precision drug design against AMR in Enterobacteriaceae.Molecular genetics and genomics : MGG · 2025Article
- Comparative Genomics Insights Into the Evolutionary Disparities Between Nitroplast-Evolved Ecotype UCYN-A2 and Its Closest Relative UCYN-A1.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Flipping the switch on some of the slowest mutating genomes: Direct measurements of plant mitochondrial and plastid mutation rates in msh1 mutants.PLoS genetics · 2025Article
- Genomic Features of E. ruysiae Associated with the Ecological Origin: Implications for the Environmental Hypothesis.Current microbiology · 2025Article
- Lost in translation: conserved amino acid usage despite extreme codon bias in foraminifera.mBio · 2025Article
- Low Mutation Rate and Atypical Mutation Spectrum in Prasinoderma coloniale: Insights From an Early Diverging Green Lineage.Genome biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Prospective identification of extracellular triacylglycerol hydrolase with conserved amino acids inBiotechnology reports (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2025Article
- Homologous recombination shapes the architecture and evolution of bacterial genomes.Nucleic acids research · 2025Article
- Flipping the switch on some of the slowest mutating genomes: Direct measurements of plant mitochondrial and plastid mutation rates inbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Bacterial Growth Temperature as a Horizontally Acquired Polygenic Trait.Genome biology and evolution · 2025Article
- The GC% landscape of the Nucleocytoviricota.Brazilian journal of microbiology : [publication of the Brazilian Society for Microbiology] · 2024Article
- Agarose Degrading Potential and Whole Genome Sequence Analysis of Marine Bacterium Aliagarivorans sp. Strain DM1 Isolated from the Arabian Sea.Current microbiology · 2024Article
174 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The genomic GC-content of bacteria varies dramatically, from less than 20% to more than 70%. This variation is generally ascribed to differences in the pattern of mutation between bacteria. Here we test this hypothesis by examining patterns of synonymous polymorphism using datasets from 149 bacterial species. We find a large excess of synonymous GC→AT mutations over AT→GC mutations segregating in all but the most AT-rich bacteria, across a broad range of phylogenetically diverse species. We show that the excess of GC→AT mutations is inconsistent with mutation bias, since it would imply that most GC-rich bacteria are declining in GC-content; such a pattern would be unsustainable. We also show that the patterns are probably not due to translational selection or biased gene conversion, because optimal codons tend to be AT-rich, and the excess of GC→AT SNPs is observed in datasets with no evidence of recombination. We therefore conclude that there is selection to increase synonymous GC-content in many species. Since synonymous GC-content is highly correlated to genomic GC-content, we further conclude that there is selection on genomic base composition in many bacteria.
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