engleski

Environmentally induced increase of rearrangement rates in radiation resistant prokaryotes

The environment shapes composition but also the evolution of microbial communities. This influence can take various forms ; for example, sharing of ecologically relevant genes through horizontal gene transfer, or convergent evolution to adapt to the same niche. But the environment can also have a much more direct role on evolutionary processes. A good example are extreme environments where physical factors can directly impact DNA integrity, mutational processes and consequently, genome evolution. Here, we show marked differences in large scale patterns of genome evolution between radiation resistant prokaryotes and their non-resistant cousins. Specifically, controlling for phylogenetic nonindependence, we demonstrate that rearrangement rates are systematically higher in radiation resistant compared to non-resistant species, in phyla as diverse as Deinococcus-Thermus, Proteobacteria and Euryarchaeota. Our results suggest that patterns of evolution shared by members of the same ecological niche can be a direct physcial consequence of the niche and need not arise from convergent adaptive evolution.

synteny; Deinococcus radiodurans; ionizing radiation resistance; gene order

nije evidentirano