Discovery and characterization of the evolution, variation and functions of diversity-generating retroelements using thousands of genomes and metagenomes.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Diversity-generating retroelements (DGRs) are a unique family of retroelements that generate sequence diversity of DNA to benefit their hosts by introducing variations and accelerating the evolution of target proteins. They exist widely in bacteria, archaea, phage and plasmid. However, our understanding about DGRs in natural environments was still very limited.

Results

We developed an efficient computational algorithm to identify DGRs, and applied it to characterize DGRs in more than 80,000 sequenced bacterial genomes as well as more than 4,000 human metagenome datasets. In total, we identified 948 non-redundant DGRs, which expanded the number of known DGRs in bacterial genomes and human microbiomes by about 55%, and provided a much more comprehensive reference fo

SUBMITTER: Yan F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6642488 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature