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Steady at the wheel: conservative sex and the benefits of bacterial transformation

Ole Herman Ambur, Jan Engelstädter, Pål J. Johnsen, Eric L. Miller, Daniel E. Rozen
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/062562
Ole Herman Ambur
1Department of Life Sciences and Health, Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, Oslo, Norway
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Jan Engelstädter
2School of Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
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Pål J. Johnsen
3Department of Pharmacy, The Artic University of Norway, Tromso, Norway
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Eric L. Miller
4Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
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Daniel E. Rozen
5Institute of Biology, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands
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Summary

Many bacteria are highly sexual, but the reasons for their promiscuity remain obscure. Did bacterial sex evolve to maximize diversity and facilitate adaptation in a changing world, or does it instead help to retain the bacterial functions that work right now? In other words, is bacterial sex innovative or conservative? Our aim in this review is to integrate experimental, bioinformatic and theoretical studies to critically evaluate these alternatives, with a main focus on natural genetic transformation, the bacterial equivalent of eukaryotic sexual reproduction. First, we provide a general overview of several hypotheses that have been put forward to explain the evolution of transformation. Next, we synthesize a large body of evidence highlighting the numerous passive and active barriers to transformation that have evolved to protect bacteria from foreign DNA, thereby increasing the likelihood that transformation takes place among clonemates. Our critical review of the existing literature provides support for the view that bacterial transformation is maintained as a means of genomic conservation that provides direct benefits to both individual bacterial cells and to transformable bacterial populations. We examine the generality of this view across bacteria and contrast this explanation with the different evolutionary roles proposed to maintain sex in eukaryotes.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted July 07, 2016.
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Steady at the wheel: conservative sex and the benefits of bacterial transformation
Ole Herman Ambur, Jan Engelstädter, Pål J. Johnsen, Eric L. Miller, Daniel E. Rozen
bioRxiv 062562; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/062562
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Steady at the wheel: conservative sex and the benefits of bacterial transformation
Ole Herman Ambur, Jan Engelstädter, Pål J. Johnsen, Eric L. Miller, Daniel E. Rozen
bioRxiv 062562; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/062562

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