Evolutionary "Crowdsourcing": Alignment of Fitness Landscapes Allows for Cross-species Adaptation of a Horizontally Transferred Gene.

ABSTRACT: Genes that undergo horizontal gene transfer (HGT) evolve in different genomic backgrounds. Despite the ubiquity of cross-species HGT, the effects of switching hosts on gene evolution remains understudied. Here, we present a framework to examine the evolutionary consequences of host-switching and apply this framework to an antibiotic resistance gene commonly found on conjugative plasmids. Specifically, we determined the adaptive landscape of this gene for a small set of mutationally connected genotypes in 3 enteric species. We uncovered that the landscape topographies were largely aligned with minimal host-dependent mutational effects. By simulating gene evolution over the experimentally gauged landscapes, we found that the adaptive evolution of the mobile gene in one species translated to

SUBMITTER: Kosterlitz O 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10657783 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature