Pathways for horizontal gene transfer in bacteria revealed by a global map of their plasmids.

ABSTRACT: Plasmids can mediate horizontal gene transfer of antibiotic resistance, virulence genes, and other adaptive factors across bacterial populations. Here, we analyze genomic composition and pairwise sequence identity for over 10,000 reference plasmids to obtain a global map of the prokaryotic plasmidome. Plasmids in this map organize into discrete clusters, which we call plasmid taxonomic units (PTUs), with high average nucleotide identity between its members. We identify 83 PTUs in the order Enterobacterales, 28 of them corresponding to previously described archetypes. Furthermore, we develop an automated algorithm for PTU identification, and validate its performance using stochastic blockmodeling. The algorithm reveals a total of 276 PTUs in the bacterial domain. Each PTU exhibits a charact

SUBMITTER: Redondo-Salvo S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7367871 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature