Horizontal gene transfer in an acid mine drainage microbial community

Background

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) has been widely identified in complete prokaryotic genomes. However, the roles of HGT among members of a microbial community and in evolution remain largely unknown. With the emergence of metagenomics, it is nontrivial to investigate such horizontal flow of genetic materials among members in a microbial community from the natural environment. Because of the lack of suitable methods for metagenomics gene transfer detection, microorganisms from a low-complexity community acid mine drainage (AMD) with near-complete genomes were used to detect possible gene transfer events and suggest the biological significance.

Results

Using the annotation of coding regions by the current tools, a phylogenetic approach, and an approximately unbiased test, we found that HGTs in AMD organisms are not rare, and we predicted 119 putative transferred genes. Among them, 14 HGT events were determined to be transfer events among the AMD members. Further analysis of the 14 transferred genes revealed that the HGT events affected the functional evolution of archaea or bacteria in AMD, and it probably shaped the community structure, such as the dominance of G-plasma in archaea in AMD through HGT.

Conclusions

Our study provides a novel insight into HGT events among microorganisms in natural communities. The interconnectedness between HGT and community evolution is essential to understand microbial community formation and development.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12864-015-1720-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

Score-based prediction of genomic islands in prokaryotic genomes using hidden Markov models

Background  

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is considered a strong evolutionary force shaping the content of microbial genomes in a substantial manner. It is the difference in speed enabling the rapid adaptation to changing environmental demands that distinguishes HGT from gene genesis, duplications or mutations. For a precise characterization, algorithms are needed that identify transfer events with high reliability. Frequently, the transferred pieces of DNA have a considerable length, comprise several genes and are called genomic islands (GIs) or more specifically pathogenicity or symbiotic islands.     

A database of phylogenetically atypical genes in archaeal and bacterial genomes,identified using the <Emphasis Type="Italic">DarkHorse</Emphasis> algorithm

Background  

The process of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is believed to be widespread in Bacteria and Archaea, but little comparative data is available addressing its occurrence in complete microbial genomes. Collection of high-quality, automated HGT prediction data based on phylogenetic evidence has previously been impractical for large numbers of genomes at once, due to prohibitive computational demands. DarkHorse, a recently described statistical method for discovering phylogenetically atypical genes on a genome-wide basis, provides a means to solve this problem through lineage probability index (LPI) ranking scores. LPI scores inversely reflect phylogenetic distance between a test amino acid sequence and its closest available database matches. Proteins with low LPI scores are good horizontal gene transfer candidates; those with high scores are not.     

An exceptional horizontal gene transfer in plastids: gene replacement by a distant bacterial paralog and evidence that haptophyte and cryptophyte plastids are sisters

Background  

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) to the plant mitochondrial genome has recently been shown to occur at a surprisingly high rate; however, little evidence has been found for HGT to the plastid genome, despite extensive sequencing. In this study, we analyzed all genes from sequenced plastid genomes to unearth any neglected cases of HGT and to obtain a measure of the overall extent of HGT to the plastid.     

Insights into horizontal acquisition patterns of dormancy and reactivation regulon genes in mycobacterial species using a partitioning-based framework

Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT) events, initially thought to be rare in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, have recently been shown to be involved in the acquisition of virulence operons in M. tuberculosis. We have developed a new partitioning framework based HGT prediction algorithm, called Grid3M, and applied the same for the prediction of HGTs in Mycobacteria. Validation and testing using simulated and real microbial genomes indicated better performance of Grid3M as compared with other widely used HGT prediction methods. Specific analysis of the genes belonging to dormancy/reactivation regulons across 14 mycobacterial genomes indicated that horizontal acquisition is specifically restricted to important accessory proteins. The results also revealed Burkholderia species to be a probable source of HGT genes belonging to these regulons. The current study provides a basis for similar analyses investigating the functional/evolutionary aspects of HGT genes in other pathogens. A database of Grid3M predicted HGTs in completely sequenced genomes is available at https://metagenomics.atc.tcs.com/Grid3M/ .     

Identification of horizontally transferred genes in the genus Colletotrichum reveals a steady tempo of bacterial to fungal gene transfer

Background

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is the stable transmission of genetic material between organisms by means other than vertical inheritance. HGT has an important role in the evolution of prokaryotes but is relatively rare in eukaryotes. HGT has been shown to contribute to virulence in eukaryotic pathogens. We studied the importance of HGT in plant pathogenic fungi by identifying horizontally transferred genes in the genomes of three members of the genus Colletotrichum.

Results

We identified eleven HGT events from bacteria into members of the genus Colletotrichum or their ancestors. The HGT events include genes involved in amino acid, lipid and sugar metabolism as well as lytic enzymes. Additionally, the putative minimal dates of transference were calculated using a time calibrated phylogenetic tree. This analysis reveals a constant flux of genes from bacteria to fungi throughout the evolution of subphylum Pezizomycotina.

Conclusions

Genes that are typically transferred by HGT are those that are constantly subject to gene duplication and gene loss. The functions of some of these genes suggest roles in niche adaptation and virulence. We found no evidence of a burst of HGT events coinciding with major geological events. In contrast, HGT appears to be a constant, albeit rare phenomenon in the Pezizomycotina, occurring at a steady rate during their evolution.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1471-2164-16-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

Evidence of a chimeric genome in the cyanobacterial ancestor of plastids

Background

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is a vexing fact of life for microbial phylogeneticists. Given the substantial rates of HGT observed in modern-day bacterial chromosomes, it is envisaged that ancient prokaryotic genomes must have been similarly chimeric. But where can one find an ancient prokaryotic genome that has maintained its ancestral condition to address this issue? An excellent candidate is the cyanobacterial endosymbiont that was harnessed over a billion years ago by a heterotrophic protist, giving rise to the plastid. Genetic remnants of the endosymbiont are still preserved in plastids as a highly reduced chromosome encoding 54 – 264 genes. These data provide an ideal target to assess genome chimericism in an ancient cyanobacterial lineage.

Results

Here we demonstrate that the origin of the plastid-encoded gene cluster for menaquinone/phylloquinone biosynthesis in the extremophilic red algae Cyanidiales contradicts a cyanobacterial genealogy. These genes are relics of an ancestral cluster related to homologs in Chlorobi/Gammaproteobacteria that we hypothesize was established by HGT in the progenitor of plastids, thus providing a 'footprint' of genome chimericism in ancient cyanobacteria. In addition to menB, four components of the original gene cluster (menF, menD, menC, and menH) are now encoded in the nuclear genome of the majority of non-Cyanidiales algae and plants as the unique tetra-gene fusion named PHYLLO. These genes are monophyletic in Plantae and chromalveolates, indicating that loci introduced by HGT into the ancestral cyanobacterium were moved over time into the host nucleus.

Conclusion

Our study provides unambiguous evidence for the existence of genome chimericism in ancient cyanobacteria. In addition we show genes that originated via HGT in the cyanobacterial ancestor of the plastid made their way to the host nucleus via endosymbiotic gene transfer (EGT).

     

Using the nucleotide substitution rate matrix to detect horizontal gene transfer

Background  

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) has allowed bacteria to evolve many new capabilities. Because transferred genes perform many medically important functions, such as conferring antibiotic resistance, improved detection of horizontally transferred genes from sequence data would be an important advance. Existing sequence-based methods for detecting HGT focus on changes in nucleotide composition or on differences between gene and genome phylogenies; these methods have high error rates.     

Towards a better detection of horizontally transferred genes by combining unusual properties effectively

Background

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is one of the major mechanisms contributing to microbial genome diversification. A number of computational methods for finding horizontally transferred genes have been proposed in the past decades; however none of them has provided a reliable detector yet. In existing parametric approaches, only one single compositional property can participate in the detection process, or the results obtained through each single property are just simply combined. It’s known that different properties may mean different information, so the single property can’t sufficiently contain the information encoded by gene sequences. In addition, the class imbalance problem in the datasets, which also results in great errors for the gene detection, hasn’t been considered by the published methods. Here we developed an effective classifier system (Hgtident) that used support vector machine (SVM) by combining unusual properties effectively for HGT detection.

Results

Our approach Hgtident includes the introduction of more representative datasets, optimization of SVM model, feature selection, handling of imbalance problem in the datasets and extensive performance evaluation via systematic cross-validation methods. Through feature selection, we found that JS-DN and JS-CB have higher discriminating power for HGT detection, while GC1–GC3 and k-mer (k = 1, 2, …, 7) make the least contribution. Extensive experiments indicated the new classifier could reduce Mean error dramatically, and also improve Recall by a certain level. For the testing genomes, compared with the existing popular multiple-threshold approach, on average, our Recall and Mean error was respectively improved by 2.81% and reduced by 26.32%, which means that numerous false positives were identified correctly.

Conclusions

Hgtident introduced here is an effective approach for better detecting HGT. Combining multiple features of HGT is also essential for a wider range of HGT events detection.     

Prediction of highly expressed genes in microbes based on chromatin accessibility

Background  

It is well known that gene expression is dependent on chromatin structure in eukaryotes and it is likely that chromatin can play a role in bacterial gene expression as well. Here, we use a nucleosomal position preference measure of anisotropic DNA flexibility to predict highly expressed genes in microbial genomes. We compare these predictions with those based on codon adaptation index (CAI) values, and also with experimental data for 6 different microbial genomes, with a particular interest in experimental data from Escherichia coli. Moreover, position preference is examined further in 328 sequenced microbial genomes.     

Functional biogeography as evidence of gene transfer in hypersaline microbial communities

Background

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) plays a major role in speciation and evolution of bacteria and archaea by controlling gene distribution within an environment. However, information that links HGT to a natural community using relevant population-genetics parameters and spatial considerations is scarce. The Great Salt Lake (Utah, USA) provides an excellent model for studying HGT in the context of biogeography because it is a contiguous system with dispersal limitations due to a strong selective salinity gradient. We hypothesize that in spite of the barrier to phylogenetic dispersal, functional characteristics—in the form of HGT—expand beyond phylogenetic limitations due to selective pressure.

Methodology and Results

To assay the functional genes and microorganisms throughout the GSL, we used a 16S rRNA oligonucleotide microarray (Phylochip) and a functional gene array (GeoChip) to measure biogeographic patterns of nine microbial communities. We found a significant difference in biogeography based on microarray analyses when comparing Sørensen similarity values for presence/absence of function and phylogeny (Student''s t-test; p = 0.005).

Conclusion and Significance

Biogeographic patterns exhibit behavior associated with horizontal gene transfer in that informational genes (16S rRNA) have a lower similarity than functional genes, and functional similarity is positively correlated with lake-wide selective pressure. Specifically, high concentrations of chromium throughout GSL correspond to an average similarity of chromium resistance genes that is 22% higher than taxonomic similarity. This suggests active HGT may be measured at the population level in microbial communities and these biogeographic patterns may serve as a model to study bacteria adaptation and speciation.     

Horizontal acquisition of multiple mitochondrial genes from a parasitic plant followed by gene conversion with host mitochondrial genes

Background  

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is relatively common in plant mitochondrial genomes but the mechanisms, extent and consequences of transfer remain largely unknown. Previous results indicate that parasitic plants are often involved as either transfer donors or recipients, suggesting that direct contact between parasite and host facilitates genetic transfer among plants.     

Ribonucleotide reduction - horizontal transfer of a required function spans all three domains

Background  

Ribonucleotide reduction is the only de novo pathway for synthesis of deoxyribonucleotides, the building blocks of DNA. The reaction is catalysed by ribonucleotide reductases (RNRs), an ancient enzyme family comprised of three classes. Each class has distinct operational constraints, and are broadly distributed across organisms from all three domains, though few class I RNRs have been identified in archaeal genomes, and classes II and III likewise appear rare across eukaryotes. In this study, we examine whether this distribution is best explained by presence of all three classes in the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA), or by horizontal gene transfer (HGT) of RNR genes. We also examine to what extent environmental factors may have impacted the distribution of RNR classes.     

HGTector: an automated method facilitating genome-wide discovery of putative horizontal gene transfers

Background

First pass methods based on BLAST match are commonly used as an initial step to separate the different phylogenetic histories of genes in microbial genomes, and target putative horizontal gene transfer (HGT) events. This will continue to be necessary given the rapid growth of genomic data and the technical difficulties in conducting large-scale explicit phylogenetic analyses. However, these methods often produce misleading results due to their inability to resolve indirect phylogenetic links and their vulnerability to stochastic events.

Results

A new computational method of rapid, exhaustive and genome-wide detection of HGT was developed, featuring the systematic analysis of BLAST hit distribution patterns in the context of a priori defined hierarchical evolutionary categories. Genes that fall beyond a series of statistically determined thresholds are identified as not adhering to the typical vertical history of the organisms in question, but instead having a putative horizontal origin. Tests on simulated genomic data suggest that this approach effectively targets atypically distributed genes that are highly likely to be HGT-derived, and exhibits robust performance compared to conventional BLAST-based approaches. This method was further tested on real genomic datasets, including Rickettsia genomes, and was compared to previous studies. Results show consistency with currently employed categories of HGT prediction methods. In-depth analysis of both simulated and real genomic data suggests that the method is notably insensitive to stochastic events such as gene loss, rate variation and database error, which are common challenges to the current methodology. An automated pipeline was created to implement this approach and was made publicly available at: https://github.com/DittmarLab/HGTector. The program is versatile, easily deployed, has a low requirement for computational resources.

Conclusions

HGTector is an effective tool for initial or standalone large-scale discovery of candidate HGT-derived genes.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1471-2164-15-717) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

A statistical analysis of the three-fold evolution of genomic compression through frame overlaps in prokaryotes

Background  

Among microbial genomes, genetic information is frequently compressed, exploiting redundancies in the genetic code in order to store information in overlapping genes. We investigate the length, phase and orientation properties of overlap in 58 prokaryotic species evaluating neutral and selective mechanisms of evolution.     

The advantages and disadvantages of horizontal gene transfer and the emergence of the first species

Background  

Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT) is beneficial to a cell if the acquired gene confers a useful function, but is detrimental if the gene has no function, if it is incompatible with existing genes, or if it is a selfishly replicating mobile element. If the balance of these effects is beneficial on average, we would expect cells to evolve high rates of acceptance of horizontally transferred genes, whereas if it is detrimental, cells should reduce the rate of HGT as far as possible. It has been proposed that the rate of HGT was very high in the early stages of prokaryotic evolution, and hence there were no separate lineages of organisms. Only when the HGT rate began to fall, would lineages begin to emerge with their own distinct sets of genes. Evolution would then become more tree-like. This phenomenon has been called the Darwinian Threshold.     

An environmental signature for 323 microbial genomes based on codon adaptation indices

Background  

Codon adaptation indices (CAIs) represent an evolutionary strategy to modulate gene expression and have widely been used to predict potentially highly expressed genes within microbial genomes. Here, we evaluate and compare two very different methods for estimating CAI values, one corresponding to translational codon usage bias and the second obtained mathematically by searching for the most dominant codon bias.     

Horizontal gene transfers link a human MRSA pathogen to contagious bovine mastitis bacteria

Background

Acquisition of virulence factors and antibiotic resistance by many clinically important bacteria can be traced to horizontal gene transfer (HGT) between related or evolutionarily distant microflora. Comparative genomic analysis has become an important tool for identifying HGT DNA in emerging pathogens. We have adapted the multi-genome alignment tool EvoPrinter to facilitate discovery of HGT DNA sequences within bacterial genomes and within their mobile genetic elements.

Principal Findings

EvoPrinter analysis of 13 different Staphylococcus aureus genomes revealed that one of the human isolates, the hospital epidemic methicillin-resistant MRSA252 strain, uniquely shares multiple putative HGT DNA sequences with different causative agents of bovine mastitis that are not found in the other human S. aureus isolates. MRSA252 shares over 14 different DNA sequence blocks with the bovine mastitis ET3 S. aureus strain RF122, and many of the HGT DNAs encode virulence factors. EvoPrinter analysis of the MRSA252 chromosome also uncovered virulence-factor encoding HGT events with the genome of Listeria monocytogenes and a Staphylococcus saprophyticus associated plasmid. Both bacteria are also causal agents of contagious bovine mastitis.

Conclusions

EvoPrinter analysis reveals that the human MRSA252 strain uniquely shares multiple DNA sequence blocks with different causative agents of bovine mastitis, suggesting that HGT events may be occurring between these pathogens. These findings have important implications with regard to animal husbandry practices that inadvertently enhance the contact of human and livestock bacterial pathogens.     

Exploring the evolutionary dynamics of plasmids: the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Acinetobacter</Emphasis> pan-plasmidome

Background  

Prokaryotic plasmids have a dual importance in the microbial world: first they have a great impact on the metabolic functions of the host cell, providing additional traits that can be accumulated in the cell without altering the gene content of the bacterial chromosome. Additionally and/or alternatively, from a genome perspective, plasmids can provide a basis for genomic rearrangements via homologous recombination and so they can facilitate the loss or acquisition of genes during these events, which eventually may lead to horizontal gene transfer (HGT). Given their importance for conferring adaptive traits to the host organisms, the interest in plasmid sequencing is growing and now many complete plasmid sequences are available online.     

Horizontal Gene Transfers in prokaryotes show differential preferences for metabolic and translational genes

Background  

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is an important process, which contributes in bacterial pathogenesis and drug resistance. A number of methods have been proposed for detection of horizontal gene transfer. One successful approach to the detection of HGT events is due to Novichkov et al. (J. Bacteriology 186, 6575–85), who rely on comparing phylogenetic distances within a gene family with genomic distances of the source organisms. Building on their approach, we introduce outlier detection in the correlation between those two sets of distances. This approach is designed to detect horizontal transfers of core set of genes present in many bacteria. The principle behind method allows detection of xenologous gene displacements as well as acquisition of novel genes.