Hanage William P
Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts 02115.
Cold Spring Harb Perspect Biol. 2016 Jul 1;8(7):a018069. doi: 10.1101/cshperspect.a018069.
The pervasive nature of bacterial recombination has become clear. Despite this, the population genetics of bacteria persist in being viewed as simple. Here, I argue against that characterization. After summarizing the history of the topic, I survey the evidence for remarkable and unexplained variation in recombination rate among and within bacterial species. I finally argue that despite recent assertions that recombination means bacterial genes are "public goods," in bacteria the level of selection is the gene, and genes can be understood to have niches with dimensions including the other contents of the genome in which they find themselves.
细菌重组的普遍性质已变得清晰。尽管如此，细菌的群体遗传学仍一直被视为简单的。在此，我反对这种描述。在总结该主题的历史之后，我审视了细菌物种之间以及物种内部重组率存在显著且无法解释的差异的证据。我最终认为，尽管最近有人断言重组意味着细菌基因是“公共物品”，但在细菌中，选择的层面是基因，并且可以理解基因具有其生态位，其维度包括它们所处基因组的其他内容。
