ArticlemBio2020
Bacterial Transformation Buffers Environmental Fluctuations through the Reversible Integration of Mobile Genetic Elements.
Article in mBio, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 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.
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
18 citing papers in PubMed, 33 citations in OpenAlex.
- Article
- Reduced MGE burden, virulence optimization, and acid stress tolerance shape the clonal succession of MRSA ST59.Science advances · 2026Article
- Causes and consequences of bacterial local adaptation via MGEs in the plant microbiome.The New phytologist · 2026Review
- Targeting Horizontal Gene Transfer to Combat Antimicrobial Resistance: A Review of Mechanisms, Drivers, and Multi-Omics Strategies.Infection and drug resistance · 2026Review
- Diversity and spread of cytoplasmic incompatibility genes among maternally inherited symbionts.PLoS genetics · 2025Article
- Ecological and public health dimensions of ESBL-producingVeterinary world · 2025Review
- Naturally competent bacteria and their genetic parasites-a battle for control over horizontal gene transfer?FEMS microbiology reviews · 2025Review
- 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
- An Overview of the Recent Advances in Antimicrobial Resistance.Microorganisms · 2024Review
- Comparative Genome Analysis of TwoAnimals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Article
- One Earth: The Equilibrium between the Human and the Bacterial Worlds.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Review
- Viral and Bacterial Communities Collaborate through Complementary Assembly Processes in Soil to Survive Organochlorine Contamination.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2023Article
- Discovery of Novel Resistance Mechanisms ofAntibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 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
- Environmental Galenics: large-scale fortification of extant microbiomes with engineered bioremediation agents.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- The DNA transporter ComEC has metal-dependent nuclease activity that is important for natural transformation.Molecular microbiology · 2021Article
- The ecology of plasmid-coded antibiotic resistance: a basic framework for experimental research and modeling.Computational and structural biotechnology journal · 2021Review
- Scarless Removal of Large Resistance Island AbaR Results in Antibiotic Susceptibility and Increased Natural Transformability in Acinetobacter baumannii.Antimicrobial agents and chemotherapy · 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
8 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) promotes the spread of genes within bacterial communities. Among the HGT mechanisms, natural transformation stands out as being encoded by the bacterial core genome. Natural transformation is often viewed as a way to acquire new genes and to generate genetic mixing within bacterial populations. Another recently proposed function is the curing of bacterial genomes of their infectious parasitic mobile genetic elements (MGEs). Here, we propose that these seemingly opposing theoretical points of view can be unified. Although costly for bacterial cells, MGEs can carry functions that are at points in time beneficial to bacteria under stressful conditions (e.g., antibiotic resistance genes). Using computational modeling, we show that, in stochastic environments, an intermediate transformation rate maximizes bacterial fitness by allowing the reversible integration of MGEs carrying resistance genes, although these MGEs are costly for host cell replication. Based on this dual function (MGE acquisition and removal), transformation would be a key mechanism for stabilizing the bacterial genome in the long term, and this would explain its striking conservation.
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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.