Environmental stress leads to genome streamlining in a widely distributed species of soil bacteria.

ABSTRACT: Bacteria have highly flexible pangenomes, which are thought to facilitate evolutionary responses to environmental change, but the impacts of environmental stress on pangenome evolution remain unclear. Using a landscape pangenomics approach, I demonstrate that environmental stress leads to consistent, continuous reduction in genome content along four environmental stress gradients (acidity, aridity, heat, salinity) in naturally occurring populations of Bradyrhizobium diazoefficiens (widespread soil-dwelling plant mutualists). Using gene-level network and duplication functional traits to predict accessory gene distributions across environments, genes predicted to be superfluous are more likely lost in high stress, while genes with multi-functional roles are more likely retained. Genes with h

SUBMITTER: Simonsen AK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8776746 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature