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Comparative Analysis of Gene Content Evolution in Phytoplasmas and Mycoplasmas

Phytoplasmas and mycoplasmas are two groups of important pathogens in the bacterial class Mollicutes. Because of their economical and clinical importance, these obligate pathogens have attracted much research attention. However, difficulties involved in the empirical study of these bacteria, particu...

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Autores principales: Chen, Ling-Ling, Chung, Wan-Chia, Lin, Chan-Pin, Kuo, Chih-Horng
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3313985/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22479625
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0034407
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author Chen, Ling-Ling
Chung, Wan-Chia
Lin, Chan-Pin
Kuo, Chih-Horng
author_facet Chen, Ling-Ling
Chung, Wan-Chia
Lin, Chan-Pin
Kuo, Chih-Horng
author_sort Chen, Ling-Ling
collection PubMed
description Phytoplasmas and mycoplasmas are two groups of important pathogens in the bacterial class Mollicutes. Because of their economical and clinical importance, these obligate pathogens have attracted much research attention. However, difficulties involved in the empirical study of these bacteria, particularly the fact that phytoplasmas have not yet been successfully cultivated outside of their hosts despite decades of attempts, have greatly hampered research progress. With the rapid advancements in genome sequencing, comparative genome analysis provides a new approach to facilitate our understanding of these bacteria. In this study, our main focus is to investigate the evolution of gene content in phytoplasmas, mycoplasmas, and their common ancestor. By using a phylogenetic framework for comparative analysis of 12 complete genome sequences, we characterized the putative gains and losses of genes in these obligate parasites. Our results demonstrated that the degradation of metabolic capacities in these bacteria has occurred predominantly in the common ancestor of Mollicutes, prior to the evolutionary split of phytoplasmas and mycoplasmas. Furthermore, we identified a list of genes that are acquired by the common ancestor of phytoplasmas and are conserved across all strains with complete genome sequences available. These genes include several putative effectors for the interactions with hosts and may be good candidates for future functional characterization.
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spelling pubmed-33139852012-04-04 Comparative Analysis of Gene Content Evolution in Phytoplasmas and Mycoplasmas Chen, Ling-Ling Chung, Wan-Chia Lin, Chan-Pin Kuo, Chih-Horng PLoS One Research Article Phytoplasmas and mycoplasmas are two groups of important pathogens in the bacterial class Mollicutes. Because of their economical and clinical importance, these obligate pathogens have attracted much research attention. However, difficulties involved in the empirical study of these bacteria, particularly the fact that phytoplasmas have not yet been successfully cultivated outside of their hosts despite decades of attempts, have greatly hampered research progress. With the rapid advancements in genome sequencing, comparative genome analysis provides a new approach to facilitate our understanding of these bacteria. In this study, our main focus is to investigate the evolution of gene content in phytoplasmas, mycoplasmas, and their common ancestor. By using a phylogenetic framework for comparative analysis of 12 complete genome sequences, we characterized the putative gains and losses of genes in these obligate parasites. Our results demonstrated that the degradation of metabolic capacities in these bacteria has occurred predominantly in the common ancestor of Mollicutes, prior to the evolutionary split of phytoplasmas and mycoplasmas. Furthermore, we identified a list of genes that are acquired by the common ancestor of phytoplasmas and are conserved across all strains with complete genome sequences available. These genes include several putative effectors for the interactions with hosts and may be good candidates for future functional characterization. Public Library of Science 2012-03-27 /pmc/articles/PMC3313985/ /pubmed/22479625 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0034407 Text en Chen 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
Chen, Ling-Ling
Chung, Wan-Chia
Lin, Chan-Pin
Kuo, Chih-Horng
Comparative Analysis of Gene Content Evolution in Phytoplasmas and Mycoplasmas
title Comparative Analysis of Gene Content Evolution in Phytoplasmas and Mycoplasmas
title_full Comparative Analysis of Gene Content Evolution in Phytoplasmas and Mycoplasmas
title_fullStr Comparative Analysis of Gene Content Evolution in Phytoplasmas and Mycoplasmas
title_full_unstemmed Comparative Analysis of Gene Content Evolution in Phytoplasmas and Mycoplasmas
title_short Comparative Analysis of Gene Content Evolution in Phytoplasmas and Mycoplasmas
title_sort comparative analysis of gene content evolution in phytoplasmas and mycoplasmas
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3313985/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22479625
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0034407
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