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Gene copy number variation and its significance in cyanobacterial phylogeny

BACKGROUND: In eukaryotes, variation in gene copy numbers is often associated with deleterious effects, but may also have positive effects. For prokaryotes, studies on gene copy number variation are rare. Previous studies have suggested that high numbers of rRNA gene copies can be advantageous in en...

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Autores principales: Schirrmeister, Bettina E, Dalquen, Daniel A, Anisimova, Maria, Bagheri, Homayoun C
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3552681/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22894826
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2180-12-177
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author Schirrmeister, Bettina E
Dalquen, Daniel A
Anisimova, Maria
Bagheri, Homayoun C
author_facet Schirrmeister, Bettina E
Dalquen, Daniel A
Anisimova, Maria
Bagheri, Homayoun C
author_sort Schirrmeister, Bettina E
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: In eukaryotes, variation in gene copy numbers is often associated with deleterious effects, but may also have positive effects. For prokaryotes, studies on gene copy number variation are rare. Previous studies have suggested that high numbers of rRNA gene copies can be advantageous in environments with changing resource availability, but further association of gene copies and phenotypic traits are not documented. We used one of the morphologically most diverse prokaryotic phyla to test whether numbers of gene copies are associated with levels of cell differentiation. RESULTS: We implemented a search algorithm that identified 44 genes with highly conserved copies across 22 fully sequenced cyanobacterial taxa. For two very basal cyanobacterial species, Gloeobacter violaceus and a thermophilic Synechococcus species, distinct phylogenetic positions previously found were supported by identical protein coding gene copy numbers. Furthermore, we found that increased ribosomal gene copy numbers showed a strong correlation to cyanobacteria capable of terminal cell differentiation. Additionally, we detected extremely low variation of 16S rRNA sequence copies within the cyanobacteria. We compared our results for 16S rRNA to three other eubacterial phyla (Chroroflexi, Spirochaetes and Bacteroidetes). Based on Bayesian phylogenetic inference and the comparisons of genetic distances, we could confirm that cyanobacterial 16S rRNA paralogs and orthologs show significantly stronger conservation than found in other eubacterial phyla. CONCLUSIONS: A higher number of ribosomal operons could potentially provide an advantage to terminally differentiated cyanobacteria. Furthermore, we suggest that 16S rRNA gene copies in cyanobacteria are homogenized by both concerted evolution and purifying selection. In addition, the small ribosomal subunit in cyanobacteria appears to evolve at extraordinary slow evolutionary rates, an observation that has been made previously for morphological characteristics of cyanobacteria.
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spelling pubmed-35526812013-01-28 Gene copy number variation and its significance in cyanobacterial phylogeny Schirrmeister, Bettina E Dalquen, Daniel A Anisimova, Maria Bagheri, Homayoun C BMC Microbiol Research Article BACKGROUND: In eukaryotes, variation in gene copy numbers is often associated with deleterious effects, but may also have positive effects. For prokaryotes, studies on gene copy number variation are rare. Previous studies have suggested that high numbers of rRNA gene copies can be advantageous in environments with changing resource availability, but further association of gene copies and phenotypic traits are not documented. We used one of the morphologically most diverse prokaryotic phyla to test whether numbers of gene copies are associated with levels of cell differentiation. RESULTS: We implemented a search algorithm that identified 44 genes with highly conserved copies across 22 fully sequenced cyanobacterial taxa. For two very basal cyanobacterial species, Gloeobacter violaceus and a thermophilic Synechococcus species, distinct phylogenetic positions previously found were supported by identical protein coding gene copy numbers. Furthermore, we found that increased ribosomal gene copy numbers showed a strong correlation to cyanobacteria capable of terminal cell differentiation. Additionally, we detected extremely low variation of 16S rRNA sequence copies within the cyanobacteria. We compared our results for 16S rRNA to three other eubacterial phyla (Chroroflexi, Spirochaetes and Bacteroidetes). Based on Bayesian phylogenetic inference and the comparisons of genetic distances, we could confirm that cyanobacterial 16S rRNA paralogs and orthologs show significantly stronger conservation than found in other eubacterial phyla. CONCLUSIONS: A higher number of ribosomal operons could potentially provide an advantage to terminally differentiated cyanobacteria. Furthermore, we suggest that 16S rRNA gene copies in cyanobacteria are homogenized by both concerted evolution and purifying selection. In addition, the small ribosomal subunit in cyanobacteria appears to evolve at extraordinary slow evolutionary rates, an observation that has been made previously for morphological characteristics of cyanobacteria. BioMed Central 2012-08-15 /pmc/articles/PMC3552681/ /pubmed/22894826 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2180-12-177 Text en Copyright ©2012 Schirrmeister et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Schirrmeister, Bettina E
Dalquen, Daniel A
Anisimova, Maria
Bagheri, Homayoun C
Gene copy number variation and its significance in cyanobacterial phylogeny
title Gene copy number variation and its significance in cyanobacterial phylogeny
title_full Gene copy number variation and its significance in cyanobacterial phylogeny
title_fullStr Gene copy number variation and its significance in cyanobacterial phylogeny
title_full_unstemmed Gene copy number variation and its significance in cyanobacterial phylogeny
title_short Gene copy number variation and its significance in cyanobacterial phylogeny
title_sort gene copy number variation and its significance in cyanobacterial phylogeny
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3552681/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22894826
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2180-12-177
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