Document Type

Article

Original Publication Date

2012

Journal/Book/Conference Title

BMC Genomics

Volume

13

Issue

245

DOI of Original Publication

10.1186/1471-2164-13-245

Comments

Originally found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2164-13-245

Date of Submission

August 2014

Abstract

Background

Understanding the history of life requires that we understand the transfer of genetic material across phylogenetic boundaries. Detecting genes that were acquired by means other than vertical descent is a basic step in that process. Detection by discordant phylogenies is computationally expensive and not always definitive. Many have used easily computed compositional features as an alternative procedure. However, different compositional methods produce different predictions, and the effectiveness of any method is not well established.

Results

The ability of octamer frequency comparisons to detect genes artificially seeded in cyanobacterial genomes was markedly increased by using as a training set those genes that are highly conserved over all bacteria. Using a subset of octamer frequencies in such tests also increased effectiveness, but this depended on the specific target genome and the source of the contaminating genes. The presence of high frequency octamers and the GC content of the contaminating genes were important considerations. A method comprising best practices from these tests was devised, the Core Gene Similarity (CGS) method, and it performed better than simple octamer frequency analysis, codon bias, or GC contrasts in detecting seeded genes or naturally occurring transposons. From a comparison of predictions with phylogenetic trees, it appears that the effectiveness of the method is confined to horizontal transfer events that have occurred recently in evolutionary time.

Conclusions

The CGS method may be an improvement over existing surrogate methods to detect genes of foreign origin.

Rights

© 2012 Elhai et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Is Part Of

VCU Study of Biological Complexity Publications

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