ArticleFrontiers in microbiology2019
Prokaryotic Genome Expansion Is Facilitated by Phages and Plasmids but Impaired by CRISPR.
Article in Frontiers in microbiology, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 9 citations in OpenAlex.
- From hijackers to architects: the role of prophages in bacterial genome evolution.Journal of bacteriology · 2026Review
- Abundance-activity decoupling in sulfur-cycling bacteria reflects viral infection types in meromictic lakes.The ISME journal · 2026Article
- OriV-Finder: a comprehensive web server for bacterial plasmid replication origin analysis.Nucleic acids research · 2025Article
- Non-Canonical Aspects of Antibiotics and Antibiotic Resistance.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Abiotic selection of microbial genome size in the global ocean.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Forty Years of Oxalobacter formigenes, a Gutsy Oxalate-Degrading Specialist.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2021Review
- Ecophysiological Features Shape the Distribution of Prophages and CRISPR in Sulfate Reducing Prokaryotes.Microorganisms · 2021Article
- Gene Transfer Agents in Symbiotic Microbes.Results and problems in cell differentiation · 2020Review
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 at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Viruses and plasmids can introduce novel DNA into bacterial cells, thereby creating an opportunity for genome expansion; conversely, CRISPR, the prokaryotic adaptive immune system, which targets and eliminates foreign DNAs, may impair genome expansions. Recent studies presented conflicting results over the impact of CRISPR on genome expansion. In this study, we constructed a comprehensive dataset of prokaryotic genomes and identified their associations with viruses and plasmids. We found that genomes associated with viruses and/or plasmids were significantly larger than those without, indicating that both viruses and plasmids contribute to genome expansion. Genomes were increasingly larger with increasing numbers of associated viruses or plasmids. Conversely, genomes with CRISPR systems were significantly smaller than those without, indicating that CRISPR has a negative impact on genome size. These results confirmed that on evolutionary timescales, viruses and plasmids facilitate genome expansion, while CRISPR impairs such a process in prokaryotes. Furthermore, our results also revealed that CRISPR systems show a preference for targeting viruses over plasmids.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.