ArticleEvolution letters2021
Evolutionary mechanisms that determine which bacterial genes are carried on plasmids.
Article in Evolution letters, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 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
24 citing papers in PubMed, 39 citations in OpenAlex.
- Viral Lifecycle Dynamics and Spatial Structure Explain Why Accessory Genes Are Associated With Temperate Phages.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Modelling the role of the microbiome in antimicrobial resistance across scales.Nature microbiology · 2026Review
- The Novel Strain Lactiplantibacillus plantarum KM2: A Promising Starter for Fermented Foods and a Potential Probiotic for Functional Foods.Probiotics and antimicrobial proteins · 2026Article
- Spread of extended-spectrum β-lactamase-producing Enterobacterales (ESBL-E) in the community living spaces of patients identified as ESBL-E carriers: impact of the housing density in an African context.Tropical medicine and health · 2026Article
- Molecular Insights into Carbapenem Resistance inInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2026Review
- Shotgun metagenomics reveals the prevalence and mobility of antibiotic resistance genes in the West Bay of the human-impacted Laguna Lake.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- ACCIO: An Assembly-Based Tool Enabling Plasmid Detection.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2025Article
- Horizontal gene transfer, segregation loss, and the speed of microbial adaptation.Evolution letters · 2025Article
- Salty secrets of Halobacterium salinarum AD88: a new archaeal ecotype isolated from Cuatro Cienegas Basin.BMC genomics · 2025Article
- Chromosomal capture of beneficial genes drives plasmids toward ecological redundancy.The ISME journal · 2025Article
- Assessing the Role of Bacterial Innate and Adaptive Immunity as Barriers to Conjugative Plasmids.Molecular biology and evolution · 2024Article
- Plasmid-Borne Biosynthetic Gene Clusters within a Permanently Stratified Marine Water Column.Microorganisms · 2024Article
- My host's enemy is my enemy: plasmids carrying CRISPR-Cas as a defence against phages.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Flagellar interference with plasmid uptake in biofilms: a joint experimental and modeling study.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2024Article
- The contribution of plasmids to trait diversity in a soil bacterium.ISME communications · 2024Article
- Plasmids, a molecular cornerstone of antimicrobial resistance in the One Health era.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2024Review
- Restriction-modification systems have shaped the evolution and distribution of plasmids across bacteria.Nucleic acids research · 2023Article
- A mathematician's guide to plasmids: an introduction to plasmid biology for modellers.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2023Review
- Prophages and plasmids can display opposite trends in the types of accessory genes they carry.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Modeling endonuclease colicin-like bacteriocin operons as 'genetic arms' in plasmid-genome conflicts.Molecular genetics and genomics : MGG · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The evolutionary pressures that determine the location (chromosomal or plasmid-borne) of bacterial genes are not fully understood. We investigate these pressures through mathematical modeling in the context of antibiotic resistance, which is often found on plasmids. Our central finding is that gene location is under positive frequency-dependent selection: the higher the frequency of one form of resistance compared to the other, the higher its relative fitness. This can keep moderately beneficial genes on plasmids, despite occasional plasmid loss. For these genes, positive frequency dependence leads to a priority effect: whichever form is acquired first-through either mutation or horizontal gene transfer-has time to increase in frequency and thus becomes difficult to displace. Higher rates of horizontal transfer of plasmid-borne than chromosomal genes therefore predict moderately beneficial genes will be found on plasmids. Gene flow between plasmid and chromosome allows chromosomal forms to arise, but positive frequency-dependent selection prevents these from establishing. Further modeling shows that this effect is particularly pronounced when genes are shared across a large number of species, suggesting that antibiotic resistance genes are often found on plasmids because they are moderately beneficial across many species. We also revisit previous theoretical work-relating to the role of local adaptation in explaining gene location and to plasmid persistence-in light of our findings.
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.