Talk:Horizontal gene transfer in prokaryotes
Lederberg's 1946 discovery of mating in Escherichia coli was heralded by Salvador Luria as likely to be "among the most fundamental advances in the whole history of bacteriological science". [1]. The bacterial mating mechanism, called conjugation, a major mechanism for horizontal gene transfer, is now known to have to have evolved to perform a wide range of biological roles for injection of both DNA and protein into diverse target cells, including bacteria, yeasts, plants and protists
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In the years 1987-1996 in Vietnam there was a medically alarming appearance of resistance to the antibiotic chloramphenicol appeared in the Gram negative aerobic meningococci bacteria causing infectious meningitis, hampering the treatment of the disease in that country. Subsequent laboratory investigations revealed that the gene conferring chloramphenicol resistance on meningococcus bacteria was identical to a previously identified mobile gene named Tn4451 found in the completely different Gram positive bacterium known as Clostridium perfringens [2]. ...
Horizontal gene transfer (HGT; also called lateral gene transfer, LGT) is movement of genes between different species, or across broad taxonomic categories.
Horizontal gene transfer is common among Bacteria and Archaea, even between very distantly-related species. It occurs in protists an in both pathogenic and non-pathogenic microorganisms and is a major feature of natural microbial evolution.
Detailed and comprehensive DNA sequence analysis of many prokaryotic cell genomes has shown that these genomes generally consist of a conserved backbone of mainly housekeeping genes that is subject to interruption by islands of DNA. These DNA islands can change relatively frequently during prokaryote evolution due to insertion, deletion and replacement events involving by foreign DNA.
Studies of antibiotic resistance genes provide convincing evidence for wide transmissibility of genes between taxonomically diverse microbial species.
- ↑ Luria, S. E. (1947) Recent advances in bacterial genetics. Bacteriological Reviews 11, page 1.
- ↑ Galimand M, Gerbaud G, Guibourdenche M, Riou JY, Courvalin P.(1998) High-level chloramphenicol resistance in Neisseria meningitidis. N Engl J Med. 1998 Sep 24;339(13):868-74. Erratum in: Engl J Med 1999 Mar 11;340(10):824.Comment in: N Engl J Med. 1998 Sep 24;339(13):917-8.