Skip to main content
bioRxiv
  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • ALERTS / RSS
Advanced Search
New Results

Integrative and conjugative elements and their hosts: composition, distribution, and organization

Jean Cury, Marie Touchon, Eduardo P. C. Rocha
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/135814
Jean Cury
Microbial Evolutionary Genomics, Institut Pasteur, 28, rue Dr Roux, Paris, 75015, FranceCNRS, UMR3525, 28, rue Dr Roux, Paris, 75015, France
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • For correspondence: jean.cury@normalesup.org
Marie Touchon
Microbial Evolutionary Genomics, Institut Pasteur, 28, rue Dr Roux, Paris, 75015, FranceCNRS, UMR3525, 28, rue Dr Roux, Paris, 75015, France
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Eduardo P. C. Rocha
Microbial Evolutionary Genomics, Institut Pasteur, 28, rue Dr Roux, Paris, 75015, FranceCNRS, UMR3525, 28, rue Dr Roux, Paris, 75015, France
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • Abstract
  • Full Text
  • Info/History
  • Metrics
  • Supplementary material
  • Preview PDF
Loading

Abstract

Conjugation of single-stranded DNA drives horizontal gene transfer between bacteria and was widely studied in conjugative plasmids. The organization and function of integrative and conjugative elements (ICE), even if they are more abundant, was only studied in a few model systems. Comparative genomics of ICE has been precluded by the difficulty in finding and delimiting these elements. Here, we present the results of a method that circumvents these problems by requiring only the identification of the conjugation genes and the species’ pan-genome. We delimited 200 ICEs and this allowed the first large-scale characterization of these elements. We quantified the presence in ICEs of a wide set of functions associated with the biology of mobile genetic elements, including some that are typically associated with plasmids, such as partition and replication. Protein sequence similarity networks and phylogenetic analyses show that ICEs are modular and that their gene repertoires can be grouped in function of their conjugation types, even if integrases were shown to be paraphyletic relative to the latter. We show that there are general trends in the functional organization of genes within ICEs and of ICEs within the bacterial chromosome paving the way for future functional and evolutionary analyses.

Copyright 
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 4.0 International license.
Back to top
PreviousNext
Posted May 09, 2017.
Download PDF

Supplementary Material

Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about bioRxiv.

NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Integrative and conjugative elements and their hosts: composition, distribution, and organization
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from bioRxiv
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the bioRxiv website.
Share
Integrative and conjugative elements and their hosts: composition, distribution, and organization
Jean Cury, Marie Touchon, Eduardo P. C. Rocha
bioRxiv 135814; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/135814
Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo CiteULike logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
Integrative and conjugative elements and their hosts: composition, distribution, and organization
Jean Cury, Marie Touchon, Eduardo P. C. Rocha
bioRxiv 135814; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/135814

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Subject Area

  • Genomics
Subject Areas
All Articles
  • Animal Behavior and Cognition (1537)
  • Biochemistry (2494)
  • Bioengineering (1751)
  • Bioinformatics (9712)
  • Biophysics (3923)
  • Cancer Biology (2983)
  • Cell Biology (4225)
  • Clinical Trials (135)
  • Developmental Biology (2644)
  • Ecology (4116)
  • Epidemiology (2033)
  • Evolutionary Biology (6919)
  • Genetics (5228)
  • Genomics (6528)
  • Immunology (2201)
  • Microbiology (6987)
  • Molecular Biology (2774)
  • Neuroscience (17377)
  • Paleontology (126)
  • Pathology (432)
  • Pharmacology and Toxicology (709)
  • Physiology (1064)
  • Plant Biology (2508)
  • Scientific Communication and Education (646)
  • Synthetic Biology (835)
  • Systems Biology (2695)
  • Zoology (437)