The Landscape of Realized Homologous Recombination in Pathogenic Bacteria

摘要: Recombination enhances the adaptive potential of organisms by allowing genetic variants to be tested on multiple genomic backgrounds. Its distribution in genome can provide insight into evolutionary forces that underlie traits, such as emergence pathogenicity. Here, we examined landscapes realized homologous recombination 500 genomes from ten bacterial species and found all have “hot” regions with elevated rates relative average. We size, gene content, chromosomal features associated these correlations between closely related species. The landscape is variable evolves rapidly. For example Salmonella, only short around 1 kb length are hot whereas Escherichia coli, some exceed 100 kb, spanning many genes. Only Streptococcus pyogenes shows evidence for positive correlation GC content has been reported several eukaryotes. Genes function cell surface/membrane often but E. coli where genes annotated “virulence associated” consistently hotter. There also “housekeeping” functions tend overrepresented cold regions. example, ribosomal proteins showed low Among specific genes, transferrin-binding three which they were found, subject interspecies recombination.