Ecological adaptation in bacteria: speciation driven by codon selection.

ABSTRACT: In bacteria, physiological change may be effected by a single gene acquisition, producing ecological differentiation without genetic isolation. Natural selection acting on such differences can reduce the frequency of genotypes that arise from recombination at these loci. However, gene acquisition can only account for recombination interference in the fraction of the genome that is tightly linked to the integration site. To identify additional loci that contribute to adaptive differences, we examined orthologous genes in species of Enterobacteriaceae to identify significant differences in the degree of codon selection. Significance was assessed using the Adaptive Codon Enrichment metric, which accounts for the variation in codon usage bias that is expected to arise from mutation and drift;

SUBMITTER: Retchless AC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3494267 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature