Genome-Wide Experimental Determination of Barriers to Horizontal Gene Transfer

by: Rotem Sorek, Yiwen Zhu, Christopher J Creevey, Pilar M Francino, Peer Bork, Edward M Rubin

Science, Vol. 318, No. 5855. (30 November 2007), pp. 1449-1452.

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The authors make clever use of the raw data from genome projects to estimate barriers to gene transfer in bacteria and archaea. The basic answer is that there are very few, and they are largely gene dosage rather than anything more fundamental. Ribosomal genes are over represented in their list, but this is again largely a dosing effect.

Reviewed by madhadron as

- 2008-07-21 18:09:24

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Résumé

Horizontal gene transfer, in which genetic material is transferred from the genome of one organism to that of another, has been investigated in microbial species mainly through computational sequence analyses. To address the lack of experimental data, we studied the attempted movement of 246,045 genes from 79 prokaryotic genomes into Escherichia coli and identified genes that consistently fail to transfer. We studied the mechanisms underlying transfer inhibition by placing coding regions from different species under the control of inducible promoters. Our data suggest that toxicity to the host inhibited transfer regardless of the species of origin and that increased gene dosage and associated increased expression may be a predominant cause for transfer failure. Although these experimental studies examined transfer solely into E. coli, a computational analysis of gene-transfer rates across available bacterial and archaeal genomes supports that the barriers observed in our study are general across the tree of life. 10.1126/science.1147112

@article{citeulike:2031739, abstract = {Horizontal gene transfer, in which genetic material is transferred from the genome of one organism to that of another, has been investigated in microbial species mainly through computational sequence analyses. To address the lack of experimental data, we studied the attempted movement of 246,045 genes from 79 prokaryotic genomes into Escherichia coli and identified genes that consistently fail to transfer. We studied the mechanisms underlying transfer inhibition by placing coding regions from different species under the control of inducible promoters. Our data suggest that toxicity to the host inhibited transfer regardless of the species of origin and that increased gene dosage and associated increased expression may be a predominant cause for transfer failure. Although these experimental studies examined transfer solely into E. coli, a computational analysis of gene-transfer rates across available bacterial and archaeal genomes supports that the barriers observed in our study are general across the tree of life. 10.1126/science.1147112}, author = {Sorek, Rotem and Zhu, Yiwen and Creevey, Christopher J. and Francino, Pilar M. and Bork, Peer and Rubin, Edward M. }, citeulike-article-id = {2031739}, doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1147112}, journal = {Science}, keywords = {genetics, horizontal\_gene\_transfer}, month = {November}, number = {5855}, pages = {1449--1452}, posted-at = {2008-07-16 16:00:06}, priority = {0}, title = {Genome-Wide Experimental Determination of Barriers to Horizontal Gene Transfer}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1147112}, volume = {318}, year = {2007} }

RIS record

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:2031739 L3 - citeulike-article-id:2031739 TI - Genome-Wide Experimental Determination of Barriers to Horizontal Gene Transfer JF - Science VL - 318 IS - 5855 SP - 1449 EP - 1452 N2 - Horizontal gene transfer, in which genetic material is transferred from the genome of one organism to that of another, has been investigated in microbial species mainly through computational sequence analyses. To address the lack of experimental data, we studied the attempted movement of 246,045 genes from 79 prokaryotic genomes into Escherichia coli and identified genes that consistently fail to transfer. We studied the mechanisms underlying transfer inhibition by placing coding regions from different species under the control of inducible promoters. Our data suggest that toxicity to the host inhibited transfer regardless of the species of origin and that increased gene dosage and associated increased expression may be a predominant cause for transfer failure. Although these experimental studies examined transfer solely into E. coli, a computational analysis of gene-transfer rates across available bacterial and archaeal genomes supports that the barriers observed in our study are general across the tree of life. 10.1126/science.1147112 KW - genetics KW - horizontal_gene_transfer AU - Sorek, Rotem AU - Zhu, Yiwen AU - Creevey, Christopher AU - Francino, Pilar AU - Bork, Peer AU - Rubin, Edward PY - 2007/11/30/ UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1147112 ER -

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