title: H-NS-like nucleoid-associated proteins, mobile genetic elements and horizontal gene transfer in bacteria.
abstract: Horizontal gene transfer plays an important role in the evolution of bacterial species, conferring new genetic traits on the recipient bacterium that extend its range of phenotypes and plasmids make important contributions to this process. However, the inappropriate expression of newly acquired genes may lead to a loss of competitive fitness, resulting in the elimination of the new gene-bacterium combination. It is thought that transcriptional silencing of horizontally acquired genes offers a route out of this dilemma and that nucleoid-associated proteins, especially those related to the H-NS protein, play a particularly important role in the silencing process. The discovery that many plasmids express orthologues of nucleoid-associated proteins adds an interesting dimension to current models of regulatory integration following lateral transfer of DNA. Other horizontally acquired genetic elements, such as genomic islands, also express nucleoid-associated proteins of their own. Here the interactions of H-NS-like nucleoid-associated proteins encoded by the core genome, genomic islands and plasmids are described.
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology, Moyne Institute of Preventive Medicine, School of Genetics and Microbiology, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland. Electronic address: cjdorman@tcd.ie.
authors.forename: Charles J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Dorman
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D001419:Bacteria / Q000235:genetics*; D001426:Bacterial Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D002876:Chromosomes, Bacterial / Q000235:genetics; D004269:DNA, Bacterial / Q000235:genetics; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D015964:Gene Expression Regulation, Bacterial; D022761:Gene Transfer, Horizontal / Q000235:genetics*; D020071:Interspersed Repetitive Sequences / Q000235:genetics*; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010957:Plasmids / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D001426:Bacterial Proteins; D004269:DNA, Bacterial
keywords: H-NS; Horizontal gene transfer; IncHI plasmids; Nucleoid associated proteins; StpA; Thermoregulation