Ecological and evolutionary solutions to the plasmid paradox.
Trends Microbiol
; 30(6): 534-543, 2022 06.
Article
en En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-34848115
ABSTRACT
The 'plasmid paradox' arises because, although plasmids are common features of bacterial genomes, theoretically they should not exist rates of conjugation were believed insufficient to allow plasmids to persist by infectious transmission, whereas the costs of plasmid maintenance meant that plasmids should be purged by negative selection regardless of whether they encoded beneficial accessory traits because these traits should eventually be captured by the chromosome, enabling the loss of the redundant plasmid. In the decade since the plasmid paradox was described, new data and theory show that a range of ecological and evolutionary mechanisms operate in bacterial populations and communities to explain the widespread distribution and stable maintenance of plasmids. We conclude, therefore, that multiple solutions to the plasmid paradox are now well understood. The current challenge for the field, however, is to better understand how these solutions operate in natural bacterial communities to explain and predict the distribution of plasmids and the dynamics of the horizontal gene transfer that they mediate in bacterial (pan)genomes.
Palabras clave
Texto completo:
1
Colección:
01-internacional
Base de datos:
MEDLINE
Asunto principal:
Transferencia de Gen Horizontal
/
Evolución Biológica
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Trends Microbiol
Asunto de la revista:
MICROBIOLOGIA
Año:
2022
Tipo del documento:
Article