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What makes a megaplasmid?
Naturally occurring plasmids come in different sizes. The smallest are less than a kilobase of DNA, while the largest can be over three orders of magnitude larger. Historically, research has tended to focus on smaller plasmids that are usually easier to isolate, manipulate and sequence, but with imp...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
The Royal Society
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8628078/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34839707 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0472 |
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author | Hall, James P. J. Botelho, João Cazares, Adrian Baltrus, David A. |
author_facet | Hall, James P. J. Botelho, João Cazares, Adrian Baltrus, David A. |
author_sort | Hall, James P. J. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Naturally occurring plasmids come in different sizes. The smallest are less than a kilobase of DNA, while the largest can be over three orders of magnitude larger. Historically, research has tended to focus on smaller plasmids that are usually easier to isolate, manipulate and sequence, but with improved genome assemblies made possible by long-read sequencing, there is increased appreciation that very large plasmids—known as megaplasmids—are widespread, diverse, complex, and often encode key traits in the biology of their host microorganisms. Why are megaplasmids so big? What other features come with large plasmid size that could affect bacterial ecology and evolution? Are megaplasmids 'just' big plasmids, or do they have distinct characteristics? In this perspective, we reflect on the distribution, diversity, biology, and gene content of megaplasmids, providing an overview to these large, yet often overlooked, mobile genetic elements. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The secret lives of microbial mobile genetic elements’. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8628078 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | The Royal Society |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-86280782021-12-23 What makes a megaplasmid? Hall, James P. J. Botelho, João Cazares, Adrian Baltrus, David A. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci Articles Naturally occurring plasmids come in different sizes. The smallest are less than a kilobase of DNA, while the largest can be over three orders of magnitude larger. Historically, research has tended to focus on smaller plasmids that are usually easier to isolate, manipulate and sequence, but with improved genome assemblies made possible by long-read sequencing, there is increased appreciation that very large plasmids—known as megaplasmids—are widespread, diverse, complex, and often encode key traits in the biology of their host microorganisms. Why are megaplasmids so big? What other features come with large plasmid size that could affect bacterial ecology and evolution? Are megaplasmids 'just' big plasmids, or do they have distinct characteristics? In this perspective, we reflect on the distribution, diversity, biology, and gene content of megaplasmids, providing an overview to these large, yet often overlooked, mobile genetic elements. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The secret lives of microbial mobile genetic elements’. The Royal Society 2022-01-17 2021-11-29 /pmc/articles/PMC8628078/ /pubmed/34839707 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0472 Text en © 2021 The Authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Articles Hall, James P. J. Botelho, João Cazares, Adrian Baltrus, David A. What makes a megaplasmid? |
title | What makes a megaplasmid? |
title_full | What makes a megaplasmid? |
title_fullStr | What makes a megaplasmid? |
title_full_unstemmed | What makes a megaplasmid? |
title_short | What makes a megaplasmid? |
title_sort | what makes a megaplasmid? |
topic | Articles |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8628078/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34839707 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0472 |
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