ArticleThe EMBO journal2023
Acquired stress resilience through bacteria-to-nematode interdomain horizontal gene transfer.
Article in The EMBO journal, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 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
8 citing papers in PubMed, 7 citations in OpenAlex.
- Paralogous guanine deaminases acquired from bacteria by horizontal gene transfer promote purine homeostasis inbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- A compendium of horizontal gene transfers in Metazoa.Scientific data · 2026Article
- Unusual inheritance of a functionalScience advances · 2025Article
- Pelodera: cosmopolitan phoretic saprotrophs and neglected models for origins of nematode parasitism.Parasites & vectors · 2025Review
- The eukaryotic horizontal gene transfer dataset a compendium.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Behavioral adaptations ofPeerJ · 2025Review
- The Caenorhabditis elegans cuticle and precuticle: a model for studying dynamic apical extracellular matrices in vivo.Genetics · 2024Review
- Acquired stress resilience through bacteria-to-nematode interdomain horizontal gene transfer.The EMBO journal · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
- Update of
Authors and funding
8 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Natural selection drives the acquisition of organismal resilience traits to protect against adverse environments. Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is an important evolutionary mechanism for the acquisition of novel traits, including metazoan acquisitions in immunity, metabolic, and reproduction function via interdomain HGT (iHGT) from bacteria. Here, we report that the nematode gene rml-3 has been acquired by iHGT from bacteria and that it enables exoskeleton resilience and protection against environmental toxins in Caenorhabditis elegans. Phylogenetic analysis reveals that diverse nematode RML-3 proteins form a single monophyletic clade most similar to bacterial enzymes that biosynthesize L-rhamnose, a cell-wall polysaccharide component. C. elegans rml-3 is highly expressed during larval development and upregulated in developing seam cells upon heat stress and during the stress-resistant dauer stage. rml-3 deficiency impairs cuticle integrity, barrier functions, and nematode stress resilience, phenotypes that can be rescued by exogenous L-rhamnose. We propose that interdomain HGT of an ancient bacterial rml-3 homolog has enabled L-rhamnose biosynthesis in nematodes, facilitating cuticle integrity and organismal resilience to environmental stressors during evolution. These findings highlight a remarkable contribution of iHGT on metazoan evolution conferred by the domestication of a bacterial gene.
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.