Abstract
In eukaryotes, fine-scale maps of meiotic recombination events have greatly advanced our understanding of the factors that affect genomic variation patterns and evolution of traits. However, in bacteria that lack natural systems for sexual reproduction, unbiased characterization of recombination landscapes has remained challenging due to variable rates of genetic exchange and influence of natural selection. Here, to overcome these limitations and to gain a genome-wide view on recombination, we crossed Bacillus strains with different genetic distances using protoplast fusion. The offspring displayed complex inheritance patterns with one of the parents consistently contributing the major part of the chromosome backbone and multiple unselected fragments originating from the second parent. Our results demonstrate that this bias was in part due to the action of restriction-modification systems, whereas genome features like GC content and local nucleotide identity did not affect distribution of recombination events around the chromosome. Furthermore, we found that recombination occurred uniformly across the genome without concentration into hotspots. Notably, our results show that species-level genetic distance did not affect genome-wide recombination. This study provides a new insight into the dynamics of recombination in bacteria and a platform for studying recombination patterns in diverse bacterial species.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 6211-6223 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | Nucleic Acids Research |
| Volume | 50 |
| Issue number | 11 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jun 24 2022 |
Funding
Oak Ridge National Laboratory Laboratory Directed Research and Development; U.S Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research, Center for Bioenergy Innovation [to D.P.V., J.C.S., H.B.C., J.C.E., D.A.J. and J.K.M.]. Funding for open access charge: Center for Bioenergy Innovation. Conflict of interest statement. D.P.V., J.C.S., D.A.J. and J.K.M. are inventors on a patent that has been filed based, in part, on the work reported in this manuscript. This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan).