ArticleGenome biology and evolution2012
High expression hampers horizontal gene transfer.
Article in Genome biology and evolution, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 64 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
64 citing papers in PubMed, 111 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Mobilome-mediated transcriptional activation of biosynthetic gene clusters and its impact on strain competitiveness in food fermentation microbiomes.Microbiome · 2025Article
- Dissecting pOXA-48 fitness effects in clinical Enterobacterales using plasmid-wide CRISPRi screens.Nature communications · 2025Article
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- Lethal perturbation of an Escherichia coli regulatory network is triggered by a restriction-modification system's regulator and can be mitigated by excision of the cryptic prophage Rac.Nucleic acids research · 2024Article
- The TAM, a Translocation and Assembly Module for protein assembly and potential conduit for phospholipid transfer.EMBO reports · 2024Review
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- Invited Review Beyond parasitic convergence: unravelling the evolution of the organellar genomes in holoparasites.Annals of botany · 2023Review
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- Evolutionary barriers to horizontal gene transfer in macrophage-associatedEvolution letters · 2023Article
- Enterococcal Linear Plasmids Adapt to Enterococcus faecium and Spread within Multidrug-Resistant Clades.Antimicrobial agents and chemotherapy · 2023Article
- Incompatibility and Interchangeability in Molecular Evolution.Genome biology and evolution · 2023Review
- Gene transferability and sociality do not correlate with gene connectivity.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Evolution of the connectivity and indispensability of a transferable gene: the simplicity hypothesis.BMC ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- Translational demand is not a major source of plasmid-associated fitness costs.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Xenogeneic Silencing and Bacterial Genome Evolution: Mechanisms for DNA Recognition Imply Multifaceted Roles of Xenogeneic Silencers.Molecular biology and evolution · 2021Review
4 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Horizontal gene transfer (HGT), the movement of genetic material from one species to another, is a common phenomenon in prokaryotic evolution. Although the rate of HGT is known to vary among genes, our understanding of the cause of this variation, currently summarized by two rules, is far from complete. The first rule states that informational genes, which are involved in DNA replication, transcription, and translation, have lower transferabilities than operational genes. The second rule asserts that protein interactivity negatively impacts gene transferability. Here, we hypothesize that high expression hampers HGT, because the fitness cost of an HGT to the recipient, arising from the 1) energy expenditure in transcription and translation, 2) cytotoxic protein misfolding, 3) reduction in cellular translational efficiency, 4) detrimental protein misinteraction, and 5) disturbance of the optimal protein concentration or cell physiology, increases with the expression level of the transferred gene. To test this hypothesis, we examined laboratory and natural HGTs to Escherichia coli. We observed lower transferabilities of more highly expressed genes, even after controlling the confounding factors from the two established rules and the genic GC content. Furthermore, expression level predicts gene transferability better than all other factors examined. We also confirmed the significant negative impact of gene expression on the rate of HGTs to 127 of 133 genomes of eubacteria and archaebacteria. Together, these findings establish the gene expression level as a major determinant of horizontal gene transferability. They also suggest that most successful HGTs are initially slightly deleterious, fixed because of their negligibly low costs rather than high benefits to the recipient.
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Registered trials
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.