{"title":"Mobile Genetic Element Flexibility as an Underlying Principle to Bacterial Evolution.","authors":"Alexandra J Weisberg, Jeff H Chang","doi":"10.1146/annurev-micro-032521-022006","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Mobile genetic elements are key to the evolution of bacteria and traits that affect host and ecosystem health. Here, we use a framework of a hierarchical and modular system that scales from genes to populations to synthesize recent findings on mobile genetic elements (MGEs) of bacteria. Doing so highlights the role that emergent properties of flexibility, robustness, and genetic capacitance of MGEs have on the evolution of bacteria. Some of their traits can be stored, shared, and diversified across different MGEs, taxa of bacteria, and time. Collectively, these properties contribute to maintaining functionality against perturbations while allowing changes to accumulate in order to diversify and give rise to new traits. These properties of MGEs have long challenged our abilities to study them. Implementation of new technologies and strategies allows for MGEs to be analyzed in new and powerful ways.</p>","PeriodicalId":7946,"journal":{"name":"Annual review of microbiology","volume":"77 ","pages":"603-624"},"PeriodicalIF":8.5000,"publicationDate":"2023-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"3","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Annual review of microbiology","FirstCategoryId":"99","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-micro-032521-022006","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2023/7/12 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"MICROBIOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 3
Abstract
Mobile genetic elements are key to the evolution of bacteria and traits that affect host and ecosystem health. Here, we use a framework of a hierarchical and modular system that scales from genes to populations to synthesize recent findings on mobile genetic elements (MGEs) of bacteria. Doing so highlights the role that emergent properties of flexibility, robustness, and genetic capacitance of MGEs have on the evolution of bacteria. Some of their traits can be stored, shared, and diversified across different MGEs, taxa of bacteria, and time. Collectively, these properties contribute to maintaining functionality against perturbations while allowing changes to accumulate in order to diversify and give rise to new traits. These properties of MGEs have long challenged our abilities to study them. Implementation of new technologies and strategies allows for MGEs to be analyzed in new and powerful ways.
期刊介绍:
Annual Review of Microbiology is a Medical and Microbiology Journal and published by Annual Reviews Inc. The Annual Review of Microbiology, in publication since 1947, covers significant developments in the field of microbiology, encompassing bacteria, archaea, viruses, and unicellular eukaryotes. The current volume of this journal has been converted from gated to open access through Annual Reviews' Subscribe to Open program, with all articles published under a CC BY license. The Impact Factor of Annual Review of Microbiology is 10.242 (2024) Impact factor. The Annual Review of Microbiology Journal is Indexed with Pubmed, Scopus, UGC (University Grants Commission).