Lateral gene transfer (LGT) is a common mechanism of nonvertical evolution, during which genetic material is transferred between two more or less distantly related organisms. It is particularly common in bacteria where it contributes to adaptive evolution with important medical implications. In evolutionary studies, LGT has been shown to create widespread discordance between gene trees as genom...

Thymidylate synthases (Thy) are key enzymes in the synthesis of deoxythymidylate, 1 of the 4 building blocks of DNA. As such, they are essential for all DNA-based forms of life and therefore implicated in the hypothesized transition from RNA genomes to DNA genomes. Two evolutionally unrelated Thy enzymes, ThyA and ThyX, are known to catalyze the same biochemical reaction. Both enzymes are spora...

The widespread presence of antibiotic resistance and virulence among Staphylococcus isolates has been attributed in part to lateral genetic transfer (LGT), but little is known about the broader extent of LGT within this genus. Here we report the first systematic study of the modularity of genetic transfer among 13 Staphylococcus genomes covering four distinct named species. Using a topology-bas...

In addition to causing severe invasive infections in humans, Streptococcus agalactiae, or group B Streptococcus (GBS), is also a major cause of bovine mastitis. Here we provide the first genome sequence for S. agalactiae isolated from a cow diagnosed with clinical mastitis (strain FSL S3-026). Comparison to eight S. agalactiae genomes obtained from human disease isolates revealed 183 genes spec...

Flaviviruses cause many human diseases, including dengue fever, yellow fever, West Nile viral encephalitis, and hemorrhagic fevers, and are transmitted to their vertebrate hosts by infected mosquitoes and ticks. Domain III of the envelope protein (E-D3) is considered to be the primary viral determinant involved in the virus-host-cell receptor interaction, and thus represents an excellent target...

Most genes have attained their observed distribution among genomes by transmission from parent to offspring through time. In prokaryotes (bacteria and archaea), however, some genes are where they are as the result of transfer from an unrelated lineage. To elucidate the biological origins and functional consequences of lateral gene transfer (LGT), we have constructed an automated computational p...

BACKGROUND Lateral gene transfer (LGT) is an important evolutionary mechanism among prokaryotes. The situation in eukaryotes is less clear; the human genome sequence failed to give strong support for any recent transfers from prokaryotes to vertebrates, yet a number of LGTs from prokaryotes to protists (unicellular eukaryotes) have been documented. Here, we perform a systematic analysis to inve...

Bacteria and archaea can exchange genetic material across lineages through processes of lateral genetic transfer (LGT). Collectively, these exchange relationships can be modeled as a network and analyzed using concepts from graph theory. In particular, densely connected regions within an LGT network have been defined as genetic exchange communities (GECs). However, it has been problematic to co...

A lipoprotein diacylglyceryl transferase (lgt) deletion mutant of Staphylococcus aureus SA113 was constructed. The lipoprotein and prelipoprotein expression, the growth behavior, and the ability of the mutant to elicit an immune response in various host cells were studied. In the wild type, the majority of [14C]palmitate-labeled lipoproteins were located in the membrane fraction, although some ...

The widespread presence of antibiotic resistance and virulence among Staphylococcus isolates has been attributed to lateral genetic transfer (LGT) between different strains or species. However, there has been very little study of the extent of LGT in Staphylococcus species using a phylogenetic approach, particularly of the units of such genetic transfer. Here we report the first systematic stud...