BPCPPDYSOE21 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 6: Systems Biology I
BP 6.2: Vortrag
Montag, 22. März 2021, 11:20–11:40, BPc
The effects of cross-species gene transfer on genome dynamics — •Mona Förster1, Isabel Rathmann1, Jeffrey Power2, Melih Yüksel1, and Berenike Maier1 — 1Universität zu Köln, Deutschland — 2Universität Tübingen, Deutschland
Phylogenetic studies have provided strong evidence that gene transfer happens frequently and acts across species. However, the rate at which gene transfer occurs and its short-term effect on genome dynamics are poorly understood. To address the effect of intra- and inter-species gene transfer on genome dynamics we developed an evolution experiment and analysis method to detect horizontal gene transfer. To investigate mechanistic contributions to gene transfer probability, we ensured minimal selection by not allowing for population dynamics. We were able to detect a remarkably high gene transfer rate of 0.4 %h−1 across subspecies of Bacillus subtilis. This rate was four times lower when gene transfer was probed between B. subtilis and Bacillus vallismortis and 125 times lower between B. subtilis and Bacillus atrophaeus. Interestingly, the average sequence divergence of integrated segments is comparable between all three donors with a mean of about 7 %. We observed that the fraction of replaced genome increases linearly throughout 40 h of DNA uptake, which suggests that transfer of genes, is not yet saturated and could be probed further in evolutionary runs. Following up on this, it will be interesting to use the fitness distribution of the minimal selection replicates to design an evolution experiment with strong selection.