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MBE Advance Access originally published online on May 4, 2009
Molecular Biology and Evolution 2009 26(8):1679-1682; doi:10.1093/molbev/msp093
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Letter

Gene Conversion Maintains Nonfunctional Transposable Elements in an Obligate Mutualistic Endosymbiont

Richard Cordaux

Université de Poitiers, CNRS UMR 6556 Ecologie, Evolution, Symbiose, Poitiers, France

E-mail: richard.cordaux{at}univ-poitiers.fr.

Accepted for publication April 24, 2009.

Long-term bacterial endosymbionts typically exhibit reduced genomes, lack genes encoding recombination functions and transposable elements, such as insertion sequences (ISs). In sharp contrast, I found that ISs constitute 2.4% of the genome of the obligate mutualistic endosymbiont Wolbachia wBm. Although no IS copy is transpositionally functional, I show that ISs persist in wBm because of frequent recombinational gene conversion (GC) homogenizing homologous IS sequences. These results not only indicate that there exists a functional recombination molecular machinery in wBm, but they also suggest that, by slowing down the rate of IS degradation and loss, GC may represent a major force influencing reductive evolution in wBm.

Key Words: gene conversion • transposable element • insertion sequence • reductive evolution • endosymbiont • Wolbachia

Jennifer Wernegreen, Associate Editor


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