ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2022
Why are rhizobial symbiosis genes mobile?
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers.
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32 citing papers in PubMed, 57 citations in OpenAlex.
- Invasive plasmids as ecosystem engineers-from mechanism to application.Essays in biochemistry · 2026Review
- Horizontal Gene Transfer and Genome Rearrangements Shape Bacterial Adaptation for Bioremediation.Environmental microbiology · 2026Review
- Mobile Genetic Elements as Key Drivers of Bacterial Evolution and Adaptation in Agroecosystems.Microbial ecology · 2026Review
- Genomic insights into Rhizobium anhuiense IY2 isolated from Trifolium caudatum root nodules.Functional & integrative genomics · 2026Article
- A widespread gut bacterial lineage distinguished by redox metabolism and phage defense.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Causes and consequences of bacterial local adaptation via MGEs in the plant microbiome.The New phytologist · 2026Review
- Concurrent ecological and evolutionary processes contribute to mutualism breakdown between legumes and rhizobia.The ISME journal · 2026Article
- Evolutionary mechanisms underlying bacterial adaptation to the plant environment.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2026Review
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- Non-nodulatingISME communications · 2026Article
- Biogeographic and Genomic Signatures of Thermal Adaptation in Facultative Symbionts.Microbial ecology · 2025Article
- Plasmid transmission dynamics and evolution of partner quality in a natural population ofmBio · 2025Article
- Mobile gene clusters and coexpressed plant-rhizobium pathways drive partner quality variation in symbiosis.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Unveiling plasmid diversity and functionality in pristine groundwater.Environmental microbiome · 2025Article
- Closed genomes of commercial inoculant rhizobia provide a blueprint for management of legume inoculation.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2025Article
- Evolutionary rescue of bacterial populations by heterozygosity on multicopy plasmids.Journal of mathematical biology · 2025Article
- Model cyanobacterial consortia reveal a consistent core microbiome independent of inoculation source or cyanobacterial host species.The ISME journal · 2025Article
- Identification and functional analysis of recent IS transposition events in rhizobia.Mobile DNA · 2024Article
- Systematic identification of cargo-mobilizing genetic elements reveals new dimensions of eukaryotic diversity.Nucleic acids research · 2024Article
- Phylometagenomics of cycad coralloid roots reveals shared symbiotic signals.Microbial genomics · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 5 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Rhizobia are one of the most important and best studied groups of bacterial symbionts. They are defined by their ability to establish nitrogen-fixing intracellular infections within plant hosts. One surprising feature of this symbiosis is that the bacterial genes required for this complex trait are not fixed within the chromosome, but are encoded on mobile genetic elements (MGEs), namely plasmids or integrative and conjugative elements. Evidence suggests that many of these elements are actively mobilizing within rhizobial populations, suggesting that regular symbiosis gene transfer is part of the ecology of rhizobial symbionts. At first glance, this is counterintuitive. The symbiosis trait is highly complex, multipartite and tightly coevolved with the legume hosts, while transfer of genes can be costly and disrupt coadaptation between the chromosome and the symbiosis genes. However, horizontal gene transfer is a process driven not only by the interests of the host bacterium, but also, and perhaps predominantly, by the interests of the MGEs that facilitate it. Thus understanding the role of horizontal gene transfer in the rhizobium-legume symbiosis requires a 'mobile genetic element's-eye view' on the ecology and evolution of this important symbiosis. This article is part of the theme issue 'The secret lives of microbial mobile genetic elements'.
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