Gene Loss Dominates As a Source of Genetic Variation within Clonal Pathogenic Bacterial Species.

ABSTRACT: Some of the most dangerous pathogens such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Yersinia pestis evolve clonally. This means that little or no recombination occurs between strains belonging to these species. Paradoxically, although different members of these species show extreme sequence similarity of orthologous genes, some show considerable intraspecies phenotypic variation, the source of which remains elusive. To examine the possible sources of phenotypic variation within clonal pathogenic bacterial species, we carried out an extensive genomic and pan-genomic analysis of the sources of genetic variation available to a large collection of clonal and nonclonal pathogenic bacterial species. We show that while nonclonal species diversify through a combination of changes to gene sequences, gene l

SUBMITTER: Bolotin E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4558853 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature