ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2016
Steady at the wheel: conservative sex and the benefits of bacterial transformation.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 34 papers.
What it found
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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
34 citing papers in PubMed.
- Two D-loop resolution systems enable natural genetic transformation in bacteria.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Sex decreases the pleiotropic costs of local adaptation by purging hitchhiking load.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2026Article
- Navigating the Semantic Labyrinth of "Sex" in the Study of Reproductive Trait Evolution.Integrative and comparative biology · 2026Article
- Evolution, Development, and the Incoherence of Sex: A Framework for Multiple Sex Concepts.Integrative and comparative biology · 2026Article
- Impact of Natural Transformation on the Acquisition of Novel Genes in Bacteria.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Naturally competent bacteria and their genetic parasites-a battle for control over horizontal gene transfer?FEMS microbiology reviews · 2025Review
- Article
- Type IV minor pilin ComN predicted the USS-receptor in Pasteurellaceae.Frontiers in microbiology · 2025Article
- Intragenomic conflicts with plasmids and chromosomal mobile genetic elements drive the evolution of natural transformation within species.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- Manipulation of natural transformation by AbaR-type islands promotes fixation of antibiotic resistance inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Bdelloid rotifers deploy horizontally acquired biosynthetic genes against a fungal pathogen.Nature communications · 2024Article
- One Earth: The Equilibrium between the Human and the Bacterial Worlds.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Review
- Testing for the fitness benefits of natural transformation during community-embedded evolution.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2023Article
- Parallel host shifts in a bacterial plant pathogen suggest independent genetic solutions.Molecular plant pathology · 2023Article
- The RecA-directed recombination pathway of natural transformation initiates at chromosomal replication forks in the pneumococcus.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Repeat sequences limit the effectiveness of lateral gene transfer and favored the evolution of meiotic sex in early eukaryotes.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Article
- Kin discrimination promotes horizontal gene transfer between unrelated strains in Bacillus subtilis.Nature communications · 2021Article
- Adaptive evolution of hybrid bacteria by horizontal gene transfer.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Genome expansion in early eukaryotes drove the transition from lateral gene transfer to meiotic sex.eLife · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Many bacteria are highly sexual, but the reasons for their promiscuity remain obscure. Did bacterial sex evolve to maximize diversity and facilitate adaptation in a changing world, or does it instead help to retain the bacterial functions that work right now? In other words, is bacterial sex innovative or conservative? Our aim in this review is to integrate experimental, bioinformatic and theoretical studies to critically evaluate these alternatives, with a main focus on natural genetic transformation, the bacterial equivalent of eukaryotic sexual reproduction. First, we provide a general overview of several hypotheses that have been put forward to explain the evolution of transformation. Next, we synthesize a large body of evidence highlighting the numerous passive and active barriers to transformation that have evolved to protect bacteria from foreign DNA, thereby increasing the likelihood that transformation takes place among clonemates. Our critical review of the existing literature provides support for the view that bacterial transformation is maintained as a means of genomic conservation that provides direct benefits to both individual bacterial cells and to transformable bacterial populations. We examine the generality of this view across bacteria and contrast this explanation with the different evolutionary roles proposed to maintain sex in eukaryotes. This article is part of the themed issue 'Weird sex: the underappreciated diversity of sexual reproduction'.
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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.