Identifying Core Genes for Microbial Phylogenies
Author Information
Author(s): Nicola Segata, Curtis Huttenhower
Primary Institution: Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard University
Hypothesis
Can we efficiently identify core genes that serve as effective taxonomic markers for microbial phylogenies?
Conclusion
The study presents a method for identifying core genes across a large number of microbial genomes, which can optimize comparative genomics and microbial community structure determination.
Supporting Evidence
- The method identified core gene sets spanning 2,861 bacterial and archaeal clades.
- Core genes were enriched for housekeeping functions including translation, transcription, and replication.
- Phylogenies constructed from core genes agreed with those built using 16S rDNA sequence similarity.
Takeaway
Scientists found a way to quickly identify important genes shared by many microbes, helping us understand how they are related and what they do.
Methodology
The study used a computational method to recursively identify core genes from a set of 1,236 prokaryotic genomes, focusing on nucleotide sequence conservation.
Limitations
The method may not scale well for very diverse clades and relies on the availability of complete genomes.
Statistical Information
P-Value
4e-16
Statistical Significance
p<0.05
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
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