ArticleNature communications2015
Migration and horizontal gene transfer divide microbial genomes into multiple niches.
Article in Nature communications, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 67 papers.
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Who cites it
67 citing papers in PubMed.
- How the social lives of bacteria affect their pangenome.Essays in biochemistry · 2026Review
- Evaluating ensemble learning approaches for horizontal gene transfer detection.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Cooperation and the evolution of bacterial niche breadth.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Everything is everywhere but Escherichia coli adapts to different niches.The ISME journal · 2026Article
- Co-occurrence is associated with horizontal gene transfer across marine bacteria independent of phylogeny.The ISME journal · 2026Article
- The role of mobile genetic elements in adaptation of the microbiota to the dynamic human gut ecosystem.Current opinion in microbiology · 2025Review
- Co-occurrence is associated with horizontal gene transfer across marine bacteria independent of phylogeny.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Horizontal acquisition of the Type I restriction-modification system enhances bacterial pathogenicity by mediating methylation of transcription factor-encoding genes.Nucleic acids research · 2025Article
- Role of horizontal gene transfer and cooperation in rhizosphere microbiome assembly.Brazilian journal of microbiology : [publication of the Brazilian Society for Microbiology] · 2025Review
- Directed Evolution of Microbial Communities in Fermented Foods: Strategies, Mechanisms, and Challenges.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Article
- Pangenomes of human gut microbiota uncover links between genetic diversity and stress response.Cell host & microbe · 2024Article
- Rapid functional activation of horizontally transferred eukaryotic intron-containing genes in the bacterial recipient.Nucleic acids research · 2024Article
- Pseudogenes act as a neutral reference for detecting selection in prokaryotic pangenomes.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Article
- Horizontal gene transfer is predicted to overcome the diversity limit of competing microbial species.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Complete genome sequence of the emerging pathogenVirulence · 2023Article
- Metacommunity structure preserves genome diversity in the presence of gene-specific selective sweeps under moderate rates of horizontal gene transfer.PLoS computational biology · 2023Article
- Bacterial motility can govern the dynamics of antibiotic resistance evolution.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Article
- Population structure and phylogeography of three closely related tree peonies.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
7 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Horizontal gene transfer is central to microbial evolution, because it enables genetic regions to spread horizontally through diverse communities. However, how gene transfer exerts such a strong effect is not understood. Here we develop an eco-evolutionary model and show how genetic transfer, even when rare, can transform the evolution and ecology of microbes. We recapitulate existing models, which suggest that asexual reproduction will overpower horizontal transfer and greatly limit its effects. We then show that allowing immigration completely changes these predictions. With migration, the rates and impacts of horizontal transfer are greatly increased, and transfer is most frequent for loci under positive natural selection. Our analysis explains how ecologically important loci can sweep through competing strains and species. In this way, microbial genomes can evolve to become ecologically diverse where different genomic regions encode for partially overlapping, but distinct, ecologies. Under these conditions ecological species do not exist, because genes, not species, inhabit niches.
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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.