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Integron Gene Cassettes and Degradation of Compounds Associated with Industrial Waste: The Case of the Sydney Tar Ponds

Integrons are genetic platforms that accelerate lateral gene transfer (LGT) among bacteria. They were first detected on plasmids bearing single and multiple drug resistance determinants in human pathogens, and it is abundantly clear that integrons have played a major role in the evolution of this pu...

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Autores principales: Koenig, Jeremy E., Sharp, Christine, Dlutek, Marlena, Curtis, Bruce, Joss, Michael, Boucher, Yan, Doolittle, W. Ford
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2009
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2669170/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19390587
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0005276
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author Koenig, Jeremy E.
Sharp, Christine
Dlutek, Marlena
Curtis, Bruce
Joss, Michael
Boucher, Yan
Doolittle, W. Ford
author_facet Koenig, Jeremy E.
Sharp, Christine
Dlutek, Marlena
Curtis, Bruce
Joss, Michael
Boucher, Yan
Doolittle, W. Ford
author_sort Koenig, Jeremy E.
collection PubMed
description Integrons are genetic platforms that accelerate lateral gene transfer (LGT) among bacteria. They were first detected on plasmids bearing single and multiple drug resistance determinants in human pathogens, and it is abundantly clear that integrons have played a major role in the evolution of this public health menace. Similar genetic elements can be found in nonpathogenic environmental bacteria and in metagenomic environmental DNA samples, and it is reasonable to suppose that integrons have facilitated microbial adaptation through LGT in niches outside infectious disease wards. Here we show that a heavily impacted estuary, exposed for almost a century to products of coal and steel industries, has developed a rich and unique cassette metagenome, containing genes likely to aid in the catabolism of compounds associated with industrial waste found there. In addition, we report that the most abundant cassette recovered in this study is one that encodes a putative LysR protein. This autoregulatory transcriptional regulator is known to activate transcription of linked target genes or unlinked regulons encoding diverse functions including chlorocatechol and dichlorophenol catabolism. Finally, only class 1 integrase genes were amplified in this study despite using different primer sets, and it may be that the cassettes present in the Tar Ponds will prove to be associated with class 1 integrase genes. Nevertheless, our cassette library provides a snapshot of a complex evolutionary process involving integron-meditated LGT likely to be important in natural bioremediation.
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spelling pubmed-26691702009-04-23 Integron Gene Cassettes and Degradation of Compounds Associated with Industrial Waste: The Case of the Sydney Tar Ponds Koenig, Jeremy E. Sharp, Christine Dlutek, Marlena Curtis, Bruce Joss, Michael Boucher, Yan Doolittle, W. Ford PLoS One Research Article Integrons are genetic platforms that accelerate lateral gene transfer (LGT) among bacteria. They were first detected on plasmids bearing single and multiple drug resistance determinants in human pathogens, and it is abundantly clear that integrons have played a major role in the evolution of this public health menace. Similar genetic elements can be found in nonpathogenic environmental bacteria and in metagenomic environmental DNA samples, and it is reasonable to suppose that integrons have facilitated microbial adaptation through LGT in niches outside infectious disease wards. Here we show that a heavily impacted estuary, exposed for almost a century to products of coal and steel industries, has developed a rich and unique cassette metagenome, containing genes likely to aid in the catabolism of compounds associated with industrial waste found there. In addition, we report that the most abundant cassette recovered in this study is one that encodes a putative LysR protein. This autoregulatory transcriptional regulator is known to activate transcription of linked target genes or unlinked regulons encoding diverse functions including chlorocatechol and dichlorophenol catabolism. Finally, only class 1 integrase genes were amplified in this study despite using different primer sets, and it may be that the cassettes present in the Tar Ponds will prove to be associated with class 1 integrase genes. Nevertheless, our cassette library provides a snapshot of a complex evolutionary process involving integron-meditated LGT likely to be important in natural bioremediation. Public Library of Science 2009-04-23 /pmc/articles/PMC2669170/ /pubmed/19390587 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0005276 Text en Koenig et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Koenig, Jeremy E.
Sharp, Christine
Dlutek, Marlena
Curtis, Bruce
Joss, Michael
Boucher, Yan
Doolittle, W. Ford
Integron Gene Cassettes and Degradation of Compounds Associated with Industrial Waste: The Case of the Sydney Tar Ponds
title Integron Gene Cassettes and Degradation of Compounds Associated with Industrial Waste: The Case of the Sydney Tar Ponds
title_full Integron Gene Cassettes and Degradation of Compounds Associated with Industrial Waste: The Case of the Sydney Tar Ponds
title_fullStr Integron Gene Cassettes and Degradation of Compounds Associated with Industrial Waste: The Case of the Sydney Tar Ponds
title_full_unstemmed Integron Gene Cassettes and Degradation of Compounds Associated with Industrial Waste: The Case of the Sydney Tar Ponds
title_short Integron Gene Cassettes and Degradation of Compounds Associated with Industrial Waste: The Case of the Sydney Tar Ponds
title_sort integron gene cassettes and degradation of compounds associated with industrial waste: the case of the sydney tar ponds
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2669170/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19390587
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0005276
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