The recent article, “The impact of horizontal gene transfer on the adaptive ability of the human oral microbiome” by Roberts and Kreth (2014) provides a valuable review of the mechanisms and consequences of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) in the oral microbiome. It discusses the three well-known mechanisms of HGT (i.e., transformation, conjugation and transduction), as well as the recently descr...

The genus Colletotrichum contains a large number of phytopathogenic fungi that produce enormous economic losses around the world. The effect of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) has not been studied yet in these organisms. Inter-Kingdom HGT into fungal genomes has been reported in the past but knowledge about the HGT between plants and fungi is particularly limited. We describe a gene in the genom...

We study the effect that conjugation-mediated Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT) has on the mutation-selection balance of a population in a static environment. We consider a model whereby a population of unicellular organisms, capable of conjugation, comes to mutation-selection balance in the presence of an antibiotic, which induces a first-order death rate constant [Formula: see text] for genomes ...

9 Acquisition of genes through horizontal gene transfer (HGT) allows microbes to rapidly gain new 10 capabilities and adapt to new or changing environments. Identifying widespread HGT regions 11 within multispecies microbiomes can pinpoint the molecular mechanisms that play key roles in 12 microbiome assembly. We sought to identify horizontally transferred genes within a model 13 microbiome, th...

The universal tree of life depicts the evolutionary relationships of all living things by grouping them into one of three Domains of life; the Archaea (archaebacteria), Baaeria (eubacteria) and Eucarya (eukaryotes). The "canonical universal tree" topology is actually a composite of phylogenies based on single ribosomal RNA gene trees and duplicated, paralogous protein gene trees. The salient fe...

Acquisition of genes through horizontal gene transfer (HGT) allows microbes to rapidly gain new capabilities and adapt to new or changing environments. Identifying widespread HGT regions within multispecies microbiomes can pinpoint the molecular mechanisms that play key roles in microbiome assembly. We sought to identify horizontally transferred genes within a model microbiome, the cheese rind....

Despite the prominent role of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) in shaping bacterial metabolism, little is known about the impact of HGT on the evolution of enzyme function. Specifically, what is the influence of a recently acquired gene on the function of an existing gene? For example, certain members of the genus Corynebacterium have horizontally acquired a whole l-tryptophan biosynthetic operon...

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) has been described as a common mechanism of transferring genetic material between prokaryotes, whereas genetic transfers from eukaryotes to prokaryotes have been rarely documented. Here we report a rare case of HGT in which plant expansin genes that code for plant cell-wall loosening proteins were transferred from plants to bacteria, fungi, and amoebozoa. In sever...

Metabolic gene clusters (MGCs), physically co-localized genes participating in the same metabolic pathway, are signature features of fungal genomes. MGCs are most often observed in specialized metabolism, having evolved in individual fungal lineages in response to specific ecological needs, such as the utilization of uncommon nutrients (e.g., galactose and allantoin) or the production of second...

Within animals, evolutionary transition toward herbivory is severely limited by the hostile characteristics of plants. Arthropods have nonetheless counteracted many nutritional and defensive barriers imposed by plants and are currently considered as the most successful animal herbivores in terrestrial ecosystems. We gather a body of evidence showing that genomes of various plant feeding insects...