ArticleEnvironmental microbiology reports2023
Role of natural transformation in the evolution of small cryptic plasmids in Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803.
Article in Environmental microbiology reports, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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4 citing papers in PubMed, 4 citations in OpenAlex.
- Cyanobacteria as a Photosynthetic Chassis for Metabolic Pathway Engineering with Heterologous Gene Expression.Current issues in molecular biology · 2026Review
- Plant genetic transformation: achievements, current status and future prospects.Plant biotechnology journal · 2025Review
- Expanding the diversity of origin of transfer-containing sequences in mobilizable plasmids.Nature microbiology · 2024Article
- Role of natural transformation in the evolution of small cryptic plasmids in Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803.Environmental microbiology reports · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Small cryptic plasmids have no clear effect on the host fitness and their functional repertoire remains obscure. The naturally competent cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 harbours several small cryptic plasmids; whether their evolution with this species is supported by horizontal transfer remains understudied. Here, we show that the small cryptic plasmid DNA is transferred in the population exclusively by natural transformation, where the transfer frequency of plasmid-encoded genes is similar to that of chromosome-encoded genes. Establishing a system to follow gene transfer, we compared the transfer frequency of genes encoded in cryptic plasmids pCA2.4 (2378 bp) and pCB2.4 (2345 bp) within and between populations of two Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 labtypes (termed Kiel and Sevilla). Our results reveal that plasmid gene transfer frequency depends on the recipient labtype. Furthermore, gene transfer via whole plasmid uptake in the Sevilla labtype ranged among the lowest detected transfer rates in our experiments. Our study indicates that horizontal DNA transfer via natural transformation is frequent in the evolution of small cryptic plasmids that reside in naturally competent organisms. Furthermore, we suggest that the contribution of natural transformation to cryptic plasmid persistence in Synechocystis is limited.
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