Gene gain and loss events in Rickettsia and Orientia species.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Genome degradation is an ongoing process in all members of the Rickettsiales order, which makes these bacterial species an excellent model for studying reductive evolution through interspecies variation in genome size and gene content. In this study, we evaluated the degree to which gene loss shaped the content of some Rickettsiales genomes. We shed light on the role played by horizontal gene transfers in the genome evolution of Rickettsiales.

Results

Our phylogenomic tree, based on whole-genome content, presented a topology distinct from that of the whole core gene concatenated phylogenetic tree, suggesting that the gene repertoires involved have different evolutionary histories. Indeed, we present evidence for 3 possible horizontal gene transfer events from vari

SUBMITTER: Georgiades K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3055210 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature