Department of Biology, University of Florence, Sesto Fiorentino, FI, Italy.
Department of Microbiology and Molecular Biology, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, United States of America.
PLoS Genet. 2018 Apr 19;14(4):e1007357. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1007357. eCollection 2018 Apr.
Bacterial genome evolution is characterized by gains, losses, and rearrangements of functional genetic segments. The extent to which large-scale genomic alterations influence genotype-phenotype relationships has not been investigated in a high-throughput manner. In the symbiotic soil bacterium Sinorhizobium meliloti, the genome is composed of a chromosome and two large extrachromosomal replicons (pSymA and pSymB, which together constitute 45% of the genome). Massively parallel transposon insertion sequencing (Tn-seq) was employed to evaluate the contributions of chromosomal genes to growth fitness in both the presence and absence of these extrachromosomal replicons. Ten percent of chromosomal genes from diverse functional categories are shown to genetically interact with pSymA and pSymB. These results demonstrate the pervasive robustness provided by the extrachromosomal replicons, which is further supported by constraint-based metabolic modeling. A comprehensive picture of core S. meliloti metabolism was generated through a Tn-seq-guided in silico metabolic network reconstruction, producing a core network encompassing 726 genes. This integrated approach facilitated functional assignments for previously uncharacterized genes, while also revealing that Tn-seq alone missed over a quarter of wild-type metabolism. This work highlights the many functional dependencies and epistatic relationships that may arise between bacterial replicons and across a genome, while also demonstrating how Tn-seq and metabolic modeling can be used together to yield insights not obtainable by either method alone.
细菌基因组的进化特点是功能遗传片段的获得、缺失和重排。大规模基因组改变对基因型-表型关系的影响程度尚未以高通量的方式进行研究。在共生土壤细菌根瘤菌中,基因组由一条染色体和两个大型染色体外复制子(pSymA 和 pSymB,它们共同构成基因组的 45%)组成。采用大规模平行转座子插入测序(Tn-seq)来评估染色体基因对这些染色体外复制子存在和不存在时生长适应性的贡献。来自不同功能类别的 10%的染色体基因显示与 pSymA 和 pSymB 存在遗传相互作用。这些结果表明染色体外复制子提供了普遍的稳健性,这进一步得到了基于约束的代谢建模的支持。通过 Tn-seq 指导的计算代谢网络重建生成了一个核心网络,该网络涵盖了 726 个基因,从而生成了一个全面的苜蓿根瘤菌核心代谢图。这种综合方法有助于为以前未表征的基因进行功能分配,同时还表明 Tn-seq 本身错过了超过四分之一的野生型代谢。这项工作突出了细菌复制子之间以及整个基因组中可能出现的许多功能依赖性和上位性关系,同时还展示了 Tn-seq 和代谢建模如何可以一起使用,以产生单独使用任何一种方法都无法获得的见解。