Hi guys,
just a random question. As HGT frequently happen in microbial world, could house-keeping genes, e.g. gyrB, COI, rRNA be horizontally transferred between microbes? Any input is welcome.
Cheers. Fang
Extensive horizontal gene transfer (HGT) has occurred for operational genes (those involved in housekeeping), whereas informational genes (those involved in transcription, translation, and related processes) are seldomly horizontally transferred.
It is has become increasingly apparent that many genes within eukaryotes and prokaryotes have been acquired by HGT, but not all genes are equally likely to be transferred. The preferential horizontal transfer of genes in both eukaryotes and prokaryotes is strongly correlated with gene function. Specifically, genes participating in transcription, translation, and related processes (informational genes) are far less likely to be horizontally transferred than genes participating in housekeeping functions (operational genes). The frequency of HGT in prokaryotes is not related to evolutionary rates (nucleotide substitution rates) because evolutionary rates for operational and informational genes have not differed significantly since the cyanobacteria and proteobacteria diverged.
We have observed topoisomerase gene transference between Streptococcus pneumoniae and other streptococcus of the viridans group. If interested you can read:
Ferrándiz MJ, Fenoll A, Liñares J, De La Campa AG. 2000. Horizontal transfer of parC and gyrA in fluoroquinolone-resistant clinical isolates of Streptococcus pneumoniae. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2000 Apr;44(4):840-7
Balsalobre L, Ferrándiz MJ, Liñares J, Tubau F, de la Campa AG. Viridans group streptococci are donors in horizontal transfer of topoisomerase IV genes to Streptococcus pneumoniae. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2003 Jul;47(7):2072-81.
My take: from my experience, most likely yes. But to be safe, I would check for the presence of mobile elements in the neighborhood of the genes you are interested in.
Also, these genes are often very well conserved, i.e. transfer would not necessarily leave a strong signal. So I guess a lot remains to be done in this field...
http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004816
This paper reports HGT of genes involved in translation:
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/9/9
These papers report HGT of 16s rRNA genes:
http://www.pnas.org/content/102/3/850.abstract?ijkey=58cf531ccd2e5cd8540139dce50736977589c765&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha
http://jb.asm.org/content/185/24/7241.full
http://jb.asm.org/content/186/9/2629.full
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