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MBE Advance Access published online on August 3, 2005
Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msi227
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Published by Oxford University Press 2005.
Accepted July 25, 2005

Research Article

Evidence for Genetic Drift in the Diversification of a Geographically Isolated Population of the Hyperthermophilic Archaeon Pyrococcus

Patricia Escobar-Páramo 1, Sulagna Ghosh 1, and Jocelyne DiRuggiero 2*

1 Dept of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
2 Dept of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD; Center of Marine Biotechnology, University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute, Baltimore, MD

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Jocelyne DiRuggiero, E-mail: diruggie{at}umd.edu


  Abstract

Genetic drift is a mechanism of population divergence that is important in the evolution of plants and animals, but is thought to be rare in free-living microorganisms because of their typically large population sizes and unrestricted means of dispersal. We used both, phylogenetic and IS element sequence analyses in hyperthermophilic archaea of the genus Pyrococcus to test the hypothesis that genetic drift played and important role in the diversification of these microorganisms. Multilocus sequence typing of a collection of 36 isolates of Pyrococcus, from different hydrothermal systems in the Pacific Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, revealed that Pyrococcus populations from different geographic locations are genetically differentiated. Analysis of insertion sequence (IS) elements in these isolates exposed their presence in all individuals of only one geographically isolated lineage, that of Vulcano Island in the Mediterranean Sea. Detailed sequence analysis of six selected IS elements in the Vulcano population showed that these elements cause deleterious genomic alterations, including inactivation of gene function. The high frequency of IS elements in the sampled population, together with their observed harmful effects in the genome of Pyrococcus, provide molecular evidence that the Vulcano Island population of Pyrococcus is geographically isolated and that those genetic mobile elements have been brought up to high frequency by genetic drift. Thus, genetic drift resulting from physical isolation should be considered as a factor influencing differentiation in prokaryotes.

Keywords: Genetic drift; Pyrococcus; transposons; archaea; phylogeny; evolution.
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