Department of Biology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario L8S 4K1, Canada.
Genetics. 2009 Aug;182(4):1365-75. doi: 10.1534/genetics.109.104216. Epub 2009 May 27.
Lateral gene transfer (LGT) and gene rearrangement are essential for shaping bacterial genomes during evolution. Separate attention has been focused on understanding the process of lateral gene transfer and the process of gene translocation. However, little is known about how gene translocation affects laterally transferred genes. Here we have examined gene translocations and lateral gene transfers in closely related genome pairs. The results reveal that translocated genes undergo elevated rates of evolution and gene translocation tends to take place preferentially in recently acquired genes. Translocated genes have a high probability to be truncated, suggesting that translocation followed by truncation/deletion might play an important role in the fast turnover of laterally transferred genes. Furthermore, more recently acquired genes have a higher proportion of genes on the leading strand, suggesting a strong strand bias of lateral gene transfer.
横向基因转移（LGT）和基因重排是细菌基因组在进化过程中形成的关键因素。人们已经分别关注于理解横向基因转移和基因易位的过程。然而，对于基因易位如何影响横向转移基因，我们知之甚少。在这里，我们研究了密切相关的基因组对中的基因易位和横向基因转移。结果表明，易位基因经历了更高的进化速率，并且基因易位往往更倾向于发生在最近获得的基因中。易位基因有很高的截断概率，这表明易位后发生截断/缺失可能在横向转移基因的快速更替中起着重要作用。此外，最近获得的基因中，前导链上的基因比例更高，这表明横向基因转移具有很强的链偏向性。
