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Mobile elements are DNA sequences that can move around the genome, changing their number of copies or simply changing their location, often affecting the activity of nearby genes. They include DNA transposable elements, plasmids and bacteriophage elements. The total of all mobile genetic elements in a genome may be referred to as the mobilome.
Roer et al. analyze genomes of Escherichia coli clonal complex 38 from humans, animals, and food to investigate its spread and host associations. They find distinct human and poultry lineages and identify plasmid markers linked to animal adaptation and zoonotic transmission.
This study used metagenomic analyses of Indian urban sewage. It revealed antibiotic contamination, resistance genes, and mobile genetic elements from multidrug-resistant pathogens, highlighting sewage as a critical antimicrobial resistance reservoir.
Mammalian oocytes and embryos undergo major epigenetic changes. Here, genome-wide mapping of the histone variant H2A.Z across mouse oogenesis and early embryogenesis reveals distinct maternal, embryonic and persistent enrichment patterns, linking histone variant dynamics to epigenetic inheritance, repeats and developmental reprogramming.
Complex prophage integration dynamics, including low-level induction, cross-family host range and transposase-mediated mobilization, challenge existing paradigms and deepen our understanding of phage–bacterial interactions in the human gut microbiome.
Environmental micro-compartment genomics provides efficient and high-throughput single-particle DNA sequencing that captures overlooked members of microbial communities.
This study shows that the mobile genetic elements of Listeria monocytogenes exhibit a structured but interconnected network of genetic exchanges. The authors found dense interconnections of similar sequences among phages, plasmids and transposons.
The insertion of the stress-responsive transposable element (TE) ONSEN into a critical flowering regulator gene confers an adaptive response to herbicide treatment in Arabidopsis thaliana natural accessions.
A new study in Science reports the refactoring of genetic codes in Escherichia coli to create a bidirectional ‘genetic firewall’ that prevents genetic transfer from or to synthetic organisms.
In this Journal Club article, Geoff Faulkner discusses how a ground-breaking study of LINE-1 mobility in human genomes demonstrated not just a role in disease but also molecular details of the mechanisms of retrotransposition.
A study in Nature Communications shows that horizontal transfer of bacterial chromosomes by phage-mediated lateral transduction renders them more mobile than many classically defined mobile genetic elements, including plasmids and transposons.
Two recent studies demonstrate that putative nucleases encoded by IS200/IS605 family transposons are programmable RNA-guided DNA endonucleases, which could represent a new source of genome-editing enzymes for biotechnological applications.
