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No evidence of inhibition of horizontal gene transfer by CRISPR–Cas on evolutionary timescales
The CRISPR (clustered, regularly, interspaced, short, palindromic repeats)–Cas (CRISPR-associated genes) systems of archaea and bacteria provide adaptive immunity against viruses and other selfish elements and are believed to curtail horizontal gene transfer (HGT). Limiting acquisition of new geneti...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group
2015
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4542034/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25710183 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2015.20 |
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author | Gophna, Uri Kristensen, David M Wolf, Yuri I Popa, Ovidiu Drevet, Christine Koonin, Eugene V |
author_facet | Gophna, Uri Kristensen, David M Wolf, Yuri I Popa, Ovidiu Drevet, Christine Koonin, Eugene V |
author_sort | Gophna, Uri |
collection | PubMed |
description | The CRISPR (clustered, regularly, interspaced, short, palindromic repeats)–Cas (CRISPR-associated genes) systems of archaea and bacteria provide adaptive immunity against viruses and other selfish elements and are believed to curtail horizontal gene transfer (HGT). Limiting acquisition of new genetic material could be one of the sources of the fitness cost of CRISPR–Cas maintenance and one of the causes of the patchy distribution of CRISPR–Cas among bacteria, and across environments. We sought to test the hypothesis that the activity of CRISPR–Cas in microbes is negatively correlated with the extent of recent HGT. Using three independent measures of HGT, we found no significant dependence between the length of CRISPR arrays, which reflects the activity of the immune system, and the estimated number of recent HGT events. In contrast, we observed a significant negative dependence between the estimated extent of HGT and growth temperature of microbes, which could be explained by the lower genetic diversity in hotter environments. We hypothesize that the relevant events in the evolution of resistance to mobile elements and proclivity for HGT, to which CRISPR–Cas systems seem to substantially contribute, occur on the population scale rather than on the timescale of species evolution. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4542034 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-45420342015-09-01 No evidence of inhibition of horizontal gene transfer by CRISPR–Cas on evolutionary timescales Gophna, Uri Kristensen, David M Wolf, Yuri I Popa, Ovidiu Drevet, Christine Koonin, Eugene V ISME J Original Article The CRISPR (clustered, regularly, interspaced, short, palindromic repeats)–Cas (CRISPR-associated genes) systems of archaea and bacteria provide adaptive immunity against viruses and other selfish elements and are believed to curtail horizontal gene transfer (HGT). Limiting acquisition of new genetic material could be one of the sources of the fitness cost of CRISPR–Cas maintenance and one of the causes of the patchy distribution of CRISPR–Cas among bacteria, and across environments. We sought to test the hypothesis that the activity of CRISPR–Cas in microbes is negatively correlated with the extent of recent HGT. Using three independent measures of HGT, we found no significant dependence between the length of CRISPR arrays, which reflects the activity of the immune system, and the estimated number of recent HGT events. In contrast, we observed a significant negative dependence between the estimated extent of HGT and growth temperature of microbes, which could be explained by the lower genetic diversity in hotter environments. We hypothesize that the relevant events in the evolution of resistance to mobile elements and proclivity for HGT, to which CRISPR–Cas systems seem to substantially contribute, occur on the population scale rather than on the timescale of species evolution. Nature Publishing Group 2015-09 2015-02-24 /pmc/articles/PMC4542034/ /pubmed/25710183 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2015.20 Text en Copyright © 2015 International Society for Microbial Ecology http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ |
spellingShingle | Original Article Gophna, Uri Kristensen, David M Wolf, Yuri I Popa, Ovidiu Drevet, Christine Koonin, Eugene V No evidence of inhibition of horizontal gene transfer by CRISPR–Cas on evolutionary timescales |
title | No evidence of inhibition of horizontal gene transfer by CRISPR–Cas on evolutionary timescales |
title_full | No evidence of inhibition of horizontal gene transfer by CRISPR–Cas on evolutionary timescales |
title_fullStr | No evidence of inhibition of horizontal gene transfer by CRISPR–Cas on evolutionary timescales |
title_full_unstemmed | No evidence of inhibition of horizontal gene transfer by CRISPR–Cas on evolutionary timescales |
title_short | No evidence of inhibition of horizontal gene transfer by CRISPR–Cas on evolutionary timescales |
title_sort | no evidence of inhibition of horizontal gene transfer by crispr–cas on evolutionary timescales |
topic | Original Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4542034/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25710183 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2015.20 |
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