The Obscure World of Integrative and Mobilizable Elements, Highly Widespread Elements that Pirate Bacterial Conjugative Systems.

ABSTRACT: Conjugation is a key mechanism of bacterial evolution that involves mobile genetic elements. Recent findings indicated that the main actors of conjugative transfer are not the well-known conjugative or mobilizable plasmids but are the integrated elements. This paper reviews current knowledge on "integrative and mobilizable elements" (IMEs) that have recently been shown to be highly diverse and highly widespread but are still rarely described. IMEs encode their own excision and integration and use the conjugation machinery of unrelated co-resident conjugative element for their own transfer. Recent studies revealed a much more complex and much more diverse lifecycle than initially thought. Besides their main transmission as integrated elements, IMEs probably use plasmid-like strategies to en

SUBMITTER: Guedon G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5704250 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature