A high-resolution view of genome-wide pneumococcal transformation.

ABSTRACT: Transformation is an important mechanism of microbial evolution through which bacteria have been observed to rapidly adapt in response to clinical interventions; examples include facilitating vaccine evasion and the development of penicillin resistance in the major respiratory pathogen Streptococcus pneumoniae. To characterise the process in detail, the genomes of 124 S. pneumoniae isolates produced through in vitro transformation were sequenced and recombination events detected. Those recombinations importing the selected marker were independent of unselected events elsewhere in the genome, the positions of which were not significantly affected by local sequence similarity between donor and recipient or mismatch repair processes. However, both types of recombinations were sometimes mosaic

SUBMITTER: Croucher NJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3375284 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature