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MBE Advance Access originally published online on August 10, 2005
Molecular Biology and Evolution 2005 22(12):2354-2361; doi:10.1093/molbev/msi233
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© The Author 2005. 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@oupjournals.org

Research Article

Recombination Shapes the Natural Population Structure of the Hyperthermophilic Archaeon Sulfolobus islandicus

Rachel J. Whitaker*,1, Dennis W. Grogan{dagger} and John W. Taylor*

* Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley; and {dagger} Department of Biological Sciences, University of Cincinnati

E-mail: rwhitaker{at}nature.berkeley.edu.

Although microorganisms make up the preponderance of the biodiversity on Earth, the ecological and evolutionary factors that structure microbial populations are not well understood. We investigated the genetic structure of a thermoacidophilic crenarchaeal species, Sulfolobus islandicus, using multilocus sequence analysis of six variable protein-coding loci on a set of 60 isolates from the Mutnovsky region of Kamchatka, Russia. We demonstrate significant incongruence among gene genealogies and a lack of association between alleles consistent with recombination rates greater than the rate of mutation.The observation of high relative rates of recombination suggests that the structure of this natural population does not fit the periodic selection model often used to describe populations of asexual microorganisms. We propose instead that frequent recombination among closely related individuals prevents periodic selection from purging diversity and provides a fundamental cohesive mechanism within this and perhaps other archaeal species.

Key Words: recombination • population structure • archaea • Sulfolobus


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