2b or Not 2b: Experimental Evolution of Functional Exogenous Sequences in a Plant RNA Virus.

ABSTRACT: Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is pervasive in viruses and thought to be a key mechanism in their evolution. On the other hand, strong selective constraints against increasing genome size are an impediment for HGT, rapidly purging horizontally transferred sequences and thereby potentially hindering evolutionary innovation. Here, we explore experimentally the evolutionary fate of viruses with simulated HGT events, using the plant RNA virus Tobacco etch virus (TEV), by separately introducing two functional, exogenous sequences to its genome. One of the events simulates the acquisition of a new function though HGT of a conserved AlkB domain, responsible for the repair of alkylation or methylation damage in many organisms. The other event simulates the acquisition of a sequence that duplicates

SUBMITTER: Willemsen A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5381683 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature