HGT

The increasing prevalence of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in the environment has garnered significant attention due to their health risk to human beings. Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is considered as an important way for ARG dissemination. There are four general routes of HGT, including conjugation, transformation, transduction and vesiduction. Selection of appropriate examining methods is crucial for comprehensively understanding characteristics and mechanisms of different HGT ways. Moreover, combined with the results obtained from different experimental methods, mathematical models could be established and serve as a powerful tool for predicting ARG transfer dynamics and frequencies...

Adenoid cystic carcinomas (ADCC) are distinctive salivary gland neoplasms with characteristic histomorphology. The diagnosis of dedifferentiation/high-grade transformation (HGT) indicates poor prognosis and is most often made on histopathology. We present a case of ADCC arising from a minor salivary gland tumor exhibiting HGT, reaching up to the submandibular gland and having lymph node metastases, suspected on fine-needle aspiration cytology. The index case highlights the awareness of the entity of the HGT of salivary gland tumors and raises suspicion for cytological diagnosis...

Pseudomonas stutzeri KC can rapidly degrade carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) to CO2 by a fortuitous reaction with pyridine-2,6-bis(thiocarboxylic acid), a metal chelator encoded by pdt genes. These genes were first identified after a spontaneous mutant, strain CTN1, lost the ability to degrade CCl4. Here we report the complete genome of strain KC and show that these pdt genes are located on an integrative and conjugative element (ICE), designated ICEPsstKC. Comparative genome analyses revealed homologues of pdt genes in genomes of members of other gammaproteobacterial orders...

Urban environments, characterized by bustling mass transit systems and high population density, host a complex web of microorganisms that impact microbial interactions. These urban microbiomes, influenced by diverse demographics and constant human movement, are vital for understanding microbial dynamics. We explore urban metagenomics, utilizing an extensive dataset from the Metagenomics & Metadesign of Subways & Urban Biomes (MetaSUB) consortium, and investigate antimicrobial resistance (AMR) patterns...

The existence of antibiotic resistant bacteria (ARB) and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) has been a global public environment and health issue. Due to the different cell structures, gram-positive/negative ARB exhibit various inactivation mechanisms in water disinfection. In this study, a gram-negative ARB Escherichia coli DH5α (E. coli DH5α) was used as a horizontal gene transfer (HGT) donor, while a gram-positive ARB Bacillus as a recipient. To develop an efficient and engineering applicable method in water disinfection, ARB and ARGs removal efficiency of Fe(VI) coupled peroxydisulfate (PDS) or peroxymonosulfate (PMS) was compared, wherein hydroxylamine (HA) was added as a reducing agent...

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) can potentially harm global public health. Horizontal gene transfer (HGT), which speeds up the emergence of AMR and increases the burden of drug resistance in mobile genetic elements (MGEs), is the primary method by which AMR genes are transferred across bacterial pathogens. New approaches are urgently needed to halt the spread of bacterial diseases and antibiotic resistance. Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR), an RNA-guided adaptive immune system, protects prokaryotes from foreign DNA like plasmids and phages...

Animal hosts harbor diverse assemblages of microbial symbionts that play crucial roles in the host's lifestyle. The link between microbial symbiosis and host development remains poorly understood. In particular, little is known about the adaptive evolution of gut bacteria in host-microbe symbioses. Recently, symbiotic relationships have been categorized as open, closed, or mixed, reflecting their modes of inter-host transmission and resulting in distinct genomic features. Members of the genus Bacteroides are the most abundant human gut microbiota and possess both probiotic and pathogenic potential, providing an excellent model for studying pan-genome evolution in symbiotic systems...

The excessive use of antibiotics has resulted in the contamination of the environment with antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs), posing a significant threat to public health. Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are known to be reservoirs of ARGs and considered to be hotspots for horizontal gene transfer (HGT) between bacterial communities. However, most studies focused on the distribution and dissemination of ARGs in hospital and urban WWTPs, and little is known about their fate in industrial WWTPs. In this study, collected the 15 wastewater samples containing N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) from five stages of the anaerobic anoxic aerobic (AAO) process in an industrial WWTPs...

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is an important evolutionary force in the formation of prokaryotic and eukaryotic genomes. In recent years, many HGT genes horizontally transferred from prokaryotes to eukaryotes have been reported, and most of them are present in arthropods. The Pacific white shrimp Litopenaeus vannamei, an important economic species of arthropod, has close relationships with bacteria, providing a platform for horizontal gene transfer (HGT). In this study, we analyzed bacteria-derived HGT based on a high-quality genome of L...

Plasmids are so closely associated with pathogens and antibiotic resistance that their potential for conferring other traits is often overlooked. Few studies consider how the full suite of traits encoded by plasmids is related to a host's environmental adaptation, particularly for Gram-positive bacteria. To investigate the role that plasmid traits might play in microbial communities from natural ecosystems, we identified plasmids carried by isolates of Curtobacterium (phylum Actinomycetota ) from a variety of soil environments...

About half of the world's population is infected with the bacterium Helicobacter pylori. For colonization, the bacterium neutralizes the low gastric pH and recruits immune cells to the stomach. The immune cells secrete cytokines, i.e., the pro-inflammatory IL-17A, which directly or indirectly damage surface epithelial cells. Since (I) dietary proteins are known to be digested into bitter tasting peptides in the gastric lumen, and (II) bitter tasting compounds have been demonstrated to reduce the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines through functional involvement of bitter taste receptors (TAS2Rs), we hypothesized that the sweet-tasting plant protein thaumatin would be cleaved into anti-inflammatory bitter peptides during gastric digestion...

The metabolic engineering of microbes has broad applications, including biomanufacturing, bioprocessing, and environmental remediation. The introduction of a complex, multistep pathway often imposes a substantial metabolic burden on the host cell, restraining the accumulation of productive biomass and limiting pathway efficiency. One strategy to alleviate metabolic burden is the division of labor (DOL) in which different subpopulations carry out different parts of the pathway and work together to convert a substrate into a final product...

Microbial lipases play a pivotal role in a wide range of biotechnological processes and in the human skin microbiome. However, their evolution remains poorly understood. Accessing the evolutionary process of lipases could contribute to future applications in health and biotechnology. We investigated genetic events associated with the evolutionary trajectory of the microbial family LIP lipases. Using phylogenetic analysis, we identified two distinct horizontal gene transfer (HGT) events from Bacteria to Fungi...

Phages can influence the horizontal gene transfer (HGT) of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) through transduction, but their profiles and effects on the transmission of ARGs are unclear, especially in complex swine sludge. In this study, we investigated the characterization of phage and ARG profiles in sludge generated from anoxic/oxic (A/O) wastewater treatment processes on swine farms using metagenomes and viromes. The results demonstrated that 205-221 subtypes of ARGs could be identified in swine sludge, among which sul1, tet(M), and floR were the dominant ARGs, indicating that sludge is an important reservoir of ARGs, especially in sludge tanks...

BACKGROUND: The tunicates form a group of filter-feeding marine animals closely related to vertebrates. They share with them a number of features such as a notochord and a dorsal neural tube in the tadpole larvae of ascidians, one of the three groups that make tunicates. However, a number of typical chordate characters have been lost in different branches of tunicates, a diverse and fast-evolving phylum. Consequently, the tunic, a sort of exoskeleton made of extracellular material including cellulose secreted by the epidermis, is the unifying character defining the tunicate phylum...

This study comprehensively deciphered the effect of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) on anammox flocculent sludge, including nitrogen removal performance, microbial community structure, functional enzyme abundance, antibiotic resistance gene (ARGs) dissemination, and horizontal gene transfer (HGT) mechanisms. After long-term exposure to 0-2.5 mg/L AgNPs for 200 cycles, anammox performance significantly decreased (P < 0.05), while the relative abundances of dominant Ca. Kuenenia and anammox-related enzymes (hzsA, nirK) increased compared to the control (P < 0...

Rosalia funebris (RFUNE; Cerambycidae), the banded alder borer, is a longhorn beetle whose larvae feed on the wood of various economically and ecologically significant trees in western North America. Adults are short-lived and not known to consume plant material substantially. We sequenced, assembled and annotated the RFUNE genome using HiFi and RNASeq data. We documented genome architecture and gene content, focusing on genes putatively involved in plant feeding (phytophagy). Comparisons were made to the well-studied genome of the Asian longhorned beetle (AGLAB; Anoplophora glabripennis) and other Cerambycidae...

Anaerobic gut fungi (AGF, Neocallimastigomycota) reside in the alimentary tract of herbivores. While their presence in mammals is well documented, evidence for their occurrence in non-mammalian hosts is currently sparse. Culture-independent surveys of AGF in tortoises identified a unique community, with three novel deep-branching genera representing >90% of sequences in most samples. Representatives of all genera were successfully isolated under strict anaerobic conditions. Transcriptomics-enabled phylogenomic and molecular dating analyses indicated an ancient, deep-branching position in the AGF tree for these genera, with an evolutionary divergence time estimate of 104-112 million years ago (Mya)...

Bacterial antimicrobial resistance (AMR) poses a significant global public health challenge. The escalation of AMR is primarily attributed to the horizontal gene transfer (HGT) of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs), often facilitated by plasmids. This underscores the critical need for a comprehensive understanding of the resistance mechanisms and transmission dynamics of these plasmids. In this study, we utilized in vitro drug sensitivity testing, conjugation transfer assays, and whole-genome sequencing to investigate the resistance mechanism of an extensively drug-resistant (XDR) Pseudomonas aeruginosa clinical isolate, MAS152...

BACKGROUND: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global threat driven mainly by horizontal gene transfer (HGT) mechanisms through mobile genetic elements (MGEs) including integrons. The variable region (VR) of an integron can acquire or excise gene cassettes (GCs) that confer resistance to antibiotics based on the selection pressure. Escherichia coli plays a significant role in the genetic transfer of resistance determinants to other Gram-negative bacteria. Current study is aimed to detect and compare integron-mediated resistance in clinical isolates of E...