ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2015
Evidence for extensive horizontal gene transfer from the draft genome of a tardigrade.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 88 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
88 citing papers in PubMed.
- Modified meiosis in the tardigrade Hypsibius exemplaris maintains heterozygosity across the genome.Genetics · 2026Article
- At the Edge of Survival: Exploring the Frontiers of Tardigrade Extreme Stress Tolerance.Molecular ecology · 2026Review
- Modified meiosis in the tardigradebioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- ParaHox Genes Revisited: From Gut Patterning to Integrated Axial and Neural Organization in Rotifera.Journal of experimental zoology. Part B, Molecular and developmental evolution · 2026Article
- Discovery of a bacteriophage sequence in a mite genome assembly reveals bacterial contamination and opens new possibilities for exploring arthropod symbionts.Microbial genomics · 2025Article
- Establishing genome sequencing and assembly for non-model and emerging model organisms: a brief guide.Frontiers in zoology · 2025Review
- Horizontally acquired CSP genes contribute to wheat adaptation and improvement.Nature plants · 2025Article
- Surprising effects of differential loss in genome evolution: the last-one-out.FEMS microbiology letters · 2025Article
- Metabolite phosphatase from anhydrobiotic tardigrades.The FEBS journal · 2024Article
- Contamination Survey of Insect Genomic and Transcriptomic Data.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Article
- Antioxidant Defense in the Toughest Animals on the Earth: Its Contribution to the Extreme Resistance of Tardigrades.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
- How to Survive without Water: A Short Lesson on the Desiccation Tolerance of Budding Yeast.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
- Crossroads of assembling a moss genome: navigating contaminants and horizontal gene transfer in the moss Physcomitrellopsis africana.G3 (Bethesda, Md.) · 2024Article
- Are Viruses Taxonomic Units? A Protein Domain and Loop-Centric Phylogenomic Assessment.Viruses · 2024Review
- Horizontal gene transfer in eukaryotes: aligning theory with data.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2024Review
- Anaerobic fungi in the tortoise alimentary tract illuminate early stages of host-fungal symbiosis and Neocallimastigomycota evolution.Nature communications · 2024Article
- ContScout: sensitive detection and removal of contamination from annotated genomes.Nature communications · 2024Article
- GTax: improving de novo transcriptome assembly by removing foreign RNA contamination.Genome biology · 2024Article
- Population Genomics of Pooled Samples: Unveiling Symbiont Infrapopulation Diversity and Host-Symbiont Coevolution.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Propagation, detection and correction of errors using the sequence database network.Briefings in bioinformatics · 2022Review
28 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
13 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Horizontal gene transfer (HGT), or the transfer of genes between species, has been recognized recently as more pervasive than previously suspected. Here, we report evidence for an unprecedented degree of HGT into an animal genome, based on a draft genome of a tardigrade, Hypsibius dujardini. Tardigrades are microscopic eight-legged animals that are famous for their ability to survive extreme conditions. Genome sequencing, direct confirmation of physical linkage, and phylogenetic analysis revealed that a large fraction of the H. dujardini genome is derived from diverse bacteria as well as plants, fungi, and Archaea. We estimate that approximately one-sixth of tardigrade genes entered by HGT, nearly double the fraction found in the most extreme cases of HGT into animals known to date. Foreign genes have supplemented, expanded, and even replaced some metazoan gene families within the tardigrade genome. Our results demonstrate that an unexpectedly large fraction of an animal genome can be derived from foreign sources. We speculate that animals that can survive extremes may be particularly prone to acquiring foreign genes.
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