ReviewFrontiers in cellular and infection microbiology2014
Social behavior and decision making in bacterial conjugation.
Review in Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 73 papers.
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Who cites it
73 citing papers in PubMed.
- Expression of conjugation genes is controlled by a novel zipper-type transcriptional attenuation mechanism.Nucleic acids research · 2026Article
- Horizontal gene transfer in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and other Saccharomycotina yeasts: a review.World journal of microbiology & biotechnology · 2026Review
- Stress-Driven Accelerated Evolution and Ecological Network Reconfiguration in Extremophilic Microbial Communities.Biology · 2026Review
- Nucleoside binding by a surface lipoprotein governs conjugative ICE acquisition in mycoplasmas.mBio · 2026Article
- Genetic Engineering and Encapsulation Strategies forFoods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Targeting Horizontal Gene Transfer to Combat Antimicrobial Resistance: A Review of Mechanisms, Drivers, and Multi-Omics Strategies.Infection and drug resistance · 2026Review
- Dissecting pOXA-48 fitness effects in clinical Enterobacterales using plasmid-wide CRISPRi screens.Nature communications · 2025Article
- VirBR counter-silences HppX3 to promote conjugation of blaNDM-IncX3 plasmids.Nucleic acids research · 2025Article
- A plasmid-encoded inactive toxin-antitoxin system MtvT/MtvA regulates plasmid conjugative transfer and bacterial virulence in Pseudomonas aeruginosa.Nucleic acids research · 2025Article
- From single cells to communities: Mathematical perspectives on bacterial quorum sensing.Computational and structural biotechnology journal · 2025Review
- It's complicated: relationships between integrative and conjugative elements and their bacterial hosts.Current opinion in microbiology · 2024Review
- Modelling Plasmid-Mediated Horizontal Gene Transfer in Biofilms.Bulletin of mathematical biology · 2024Article
- A comprehensive list of genes required for the efficient conjugation of plasmid Rts1 was determined by systematic deletion analysis.DNA research : an international journal for rapid publication of reports on genes and genomes · 2024Article
- Systematic investigation of recipient cell genetic requirements reveals important surface receptors for conjugative transfer of IncI2 plasmids.Communications biology · 2023Article
- A mathematician's guide to plasmids: an introduction to plasmid biology for modellers.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2023Review
- Article
- Inhibition of Plasmid Conjugation inInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2023Article
- The Effect of Outer Space and Other Environmental Cues on Bacterial Conjugation.Microbiology spectrum · 2023Article
- Delineation of a lactococcal conjugation system reveals a restriction-modification evasion system.Microbial biotechnology · 2023Article
- Origins of transfer establish networks of functional dependencies for plasmid transfer by conjugation.Nucleic acids research · 2023Article
13 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Bacteria frequently acquire novel genes by horizontal gene transfer (HGT). HGT through the process of bacterial conjugation is highly efficient and depends on the presence of conjugative plasmids (CPs) or integrated conjugative elements (ICEs) that provide the necessary genes for DNA transmission. This review focuses on recent advancements in our understanding of ssDNA transfer systems and regulatory networks ensuring timely and spatially controlled DNA transfer (tra) gene expression. As will become obvious by comparing different systems, by default, tra genes are shut off in cells in which conjugative elements are present. Only when conditions are optimal, donor cells-through epigenetic alleviation of negatively acting roadblocks and direct stimulation of DNA transfer genes-become transfer competent. These transfer competent cells have developmentally transformed into specialized cells capable of secreting ssDNA via a T4S (type IV secretion) complex directly into recipient cells. Intriguingly, even under optimal conditions, only a fraction of the population undergoes this transition, a finding that indicates specialization and cooperative, social behavior. Thereby, at the population level, the metabolic burden and other negative consequences of tra gene expression are greatly reduced without compromising the ability to horizontally transfer genes to novel bacterial hosts. This undoubtedly intelligent strategy may explain why conjugative elements-CPs and ICEs-have been successfully kept in and evolved with bacteria to constitute a major driving force of bacterial evolution.
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