ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2022
What makes a megaplasmid?
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 63 papers.
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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
63 citing papers in PubMed, 90 citations in OpenAlex.
- The shared evolutionary capacities of plasmids and extrachromosomal DNA.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2026Review
- The pQBR mercury resistance plasmids: a model set of sympatric environmental mobile genetic elements.Microbial genomics · 2026Article
- Plasmid Curing ofBio-protocol · 2026Article
- Large extrachromosomal replicons are widespread across bacterial lineages and show coordinated replication termination and spatial coupling with the chromosome.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Article
- PlasRAG: comprehensive plasmid characterization and retrieval through sequence-text alignment.Genome biology · 2026Article
- Plasmids serve as vehicles and reservoirs of type VI secretion systems.ISME communications · 2026Article
- Genomic plasticity and mobilome architecture ofMicrobial genomics · 2026Article
- Circling in on plasmids: benchmarking plasmid detection and reconstruction tools for short-read data from diverse species.Briefings in bioinformatics · 2025Article
- Novel insights into the genome organization ofMicrobial genomics · 2025Article
- Evolution of the Plant-Associated Pantoea was Accompanied by Plasmid Domestication Events.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Megaplasmids associate withbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Article
- Communities of plasmids as strategies for antimicrobial resistance gene survival in wastewater treatment plant effluent.npj antimicrobials and resistance · 2025Article
- Evolution of XDRAntimicrobial agents and chemotherapy · 2025Article
- Giant extrachromosomal element "Inocle" potentially expands the adaptive capacity of the human oral microbiome.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Comparative genomics ofMicrobial genomics · 2025Article
- Scaling laws of bacterial and archaeal plasmids.Nature communications · 2025Article
- How many plasmids can bacteria carry? A synthetic biology perspective.Open biology · 2025Review
- Identification of key steps in the evolution of anaerobic methanotrophy inScience advances · 2025Article
3 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 4 institutions in 5 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Naturally occurring plasmids come in different sizes. The smallest are less than a kilobase of DNA, while the largest can be over three orders of magnitude larger. Historically, research has tended to focus on smaller plasmids that are usually easier to isolate, manipulate and sequence, but with improved genome assemblies made possible by long-read sequencing, there is increased appreciation that very large plasmids-known as megaplasmids-are widespread, diverse, complex, and often encode key traits in the biology of their host microorganisms. Why are megaplasmids so big? What other features come with large plasmid size that could affect bacterial ecology and evolution? Are megaplasmids 'just' big plasmids, or do they have distinct characteristics? In this perspective, we reflect on the distribution, diversity, biology, and gene content of megaplasmids, providing an overview to these large, yet often overlooked, mobile genetic elements. This article is part of the theme issue 'The secret lives of microbial mobile genetic elements'.
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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.