Transfer of noncoding DNA drives regulatory rewiring in bacteria.

ABSTRACT: Understanding the mechanisms that generate variation is a common pursuit unifying the life sciences. Bacteria represent an especially striking puzzle, because closely related strains possess radically different metabolic and ecological capabilities. Differences in protein repertoire arising from gene transfer are currently considered the primary mechanism underlying phenotypic plasticity in bacteria. Although bacterial coding plasticity has been extensively studied in previous decades, little is known about the role that regulatory plasticity plays in bacterial evolution. Here, we show that bacterial genes can rapidly shift between multiple regulatory modes by acquiring functionally divergent nonhomologous promoter regions. Through analysis of 270,000 regulatory regions across 247 genomes,

SUBMITTER: Oren Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4234569 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature