Hello,
can anybody recommend an article/articles or gives details on the origin and the evolution of plasmids. I'm also interested in the molecular mechanisms that leads to the formation of a plasmid. E.g. if there is bacteria A "interested" in a certain gene in the genome of bacteria B. Is bacteria B able to encode this gene on a plasmid (by recombination?) and then transfer it to bacteria A?
Thanks!
Best
Jonas
Bacteria don't talk to each other and ask to borrow copies of genes, of course. But they do exchange DNA a lot, often times though plasmids or phages, but also by sometimes just picking up DNA from the environment. I the lab we can induce these things to happen more often by techniques such as electroporation.
Some plasmids are well studied and known to be transferred by specific mechanisms. For example the E. coli F plasmid and the F pilus.
DNA often moves around the bacterial genome, and between plasmids or between the genome and a plasmid or phage, by transposition using transposase enzymes and DNA damage/repair enzymes. A single bacterial chrmosome can encode dozens of transposase enzymes.
Many books have been written on these topics. It is a bit much to try to explain more of it here.
Book Methods in Molecular Biology
http://www.asmscience.org/content/book/10.1128/9781555817954.chap45
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/immunology-and-microbiology/mobile-genetic-elements
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3183850/
https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/kmge20
Article ACLAME: a classification of Mobile genetic Elements
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