title: Modular networks and cumulative impact of lateral transfer in prokaryote genome evolution.
abstract: Lateral gene transfer is an important mechanism of natural variation among prokaryotes, but the significance of its quantitative contribution to genome evolution is debated. Here, we report networks that capture both vertical and lateral components of evolutionary history among 539,723 genes distributed across 181 sequenced prokaryotic genomes. Partitioning of these networks by an eigenspectrum analysis identifies community structure in prokaryotic gene-sharing networks, the modules of which do not correspond to a strictly hierarchical prokaryotic classification. Our results indicate that, on average, at least 81 +/- 15% of the genes in each genome studied were involved in lateral gene transfer at some point in their history, even though they can be vertically inherited after acquisition, uncovering a substantial cumulative effect of lateral gene transfer on longer evolutionary time scales.
authors.affiliation: Institut für Botanik III, Heinrich-Heine Universität Düsseldorf, Universitätsstrasse 1, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany. tal.dagan@uni-duesseldorf.de
authors.forename: Tal
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Dagan
authors.forename: Yael
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Artzy-Randrup
authors.forename: William
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Martin
mesh_terms: D001105:Archaea / Q000235:genetics; D001419:Bacteria / Q000235:genetics; D001426:Bacterial Proteins / Q000235:genetics; D005075:Biological Evolution; D053263:Gene Regulatory Networks; D022761:Gene Transfer, Horizontal; D020745:Genome, Archaeal; D016680:Genome, Bacterial; D008957:Models, Genetic; D010802:Phylogeny; D011387:Prokaryotic Cells
chemical_list: D001426:Bacterial Proteins