Journal ArticleDOI
Cryptic genes: evolutionary puzzles
Mitali Mukerji,S. Mahadevan +1 more
TLDR
This review is an attempt to examine some of the well-characterized cryptic genetic systems in Escherichia coli in an effort to understand their functional and evolutionary significance.Abstract:
Many microorganisms carry genes that have the potential to code for specific functions but remain inactive during the normal lifetime of the organism. Such genes have been termed cryptic genes and their activation usually requires a mutational event. They are different from pseudogenes which arise as a result of duplication of a functional gene but remain inactivated because of the accumulation of multiple mutations. This review is an attempt to examine some of the well-characterized cryptic genetic systems in Escherichia coli in an effort to understand their functional and evolutionary significance.read more
Citations
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Central Role of the Cell in Microbial Ecology
TL;DR: It becomes important to evaluate population-wide measurements carefully in the light of single-cell individuality and genome heterogeneity, and the cell as a central unit for understanding processes on a community level is discussed.
Journal ArticleDOI
Reconstitution of a defunct glycolytic pathway via recruitment of ambiguous sugar kinases.
Brian G. Miller,Ronald T. Raines +1 more
TL;DR: Miller et al. as discussed by the authors identified three distinct ambiguous sugar kinases embedded within the modern Escherichia coli genome, i.e., YajF, YcfX and NanK polypeptides, all of which possess rudimentary glucokinase activities.
Journal ArticleDOI
Engineering Escherichia coli for efficient cellobiose utilization.
TL;DR: E. coli normally cannot utilize the β-glucoside sugar cellobiose as a carbon and energy source unless a stringent selection pressure for survival is present, but evolutionary adaptation of the engineered strain CP12CHBASC by repeated subculture in cellobioses-containing minimal medium led to an increase in the rate ofcellobiose uptake and cell growth.
Journal ArticleDOI
Mutations That Activate the Silent bgl Operon of Escherichia coli Confer a Growth Advantage in Stationary Phase
TL;DR: It is shown that strains that carry an activated bgl operon exhibit a growth advantage over the wild type in stationary phase in the presence of the rpoS819 allele that causes attenuated rPOS regulon expression.
Journal ArticleDOI
Transcriptional silencing in bacteria.
TL;DR: Studies of transcriptional silencing promise an entrée to relatively unexplored areas of prokaryotic biology.
References
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Book
The Selfish Gene
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors take up the concepts of altruistic and selfish behaviour; the genetical definition of selfish interest; the evolution of aggressive behaviour; kinship theory; sex ratio theory; reciprocal altruism; deceit; and the natural selection of sex differences.
Journal ArticleDOI
Selfish DNA: the ultimate parasite
Leslie E. Orgel,Francis Crick +1 more
TL;DR: The DNA of higher organisms usually falls into two classes, one specific and the other comparatively nonspecific, and it seems plausible that most of the latter originated by the spreading of sequences which had little or no effect on the phenotype.
Journal ArticleDOI
Selfish genes, the phenotype paradigm and genome evolution.
W. F. Doolittle,Carmen Sapienza +1 more
TL;DR: Natural selection operating within genomes will inevitably result in the appearance of DNAs with no phenotypic expression whose only ‘function’ is survival within genomes.
Journal ArticleDOI
Linkage map of Escherichia coli K-12, edition 8.
TL;DR: The linkage map of Escherichia coli K-12 depicts the arrangement of genes on the circular chromosome of this organism and there are now 1,403 loci placed on the linkage group, which may represent between one-third and one-half of the genes in this organism.