Mobile Genetic Elements inMoraxella catarrhalis

Mobile Genetic Elements of Nosocomial Pathogens

A significant increase in the isolation frequency of ciprofloxacin-resistant Escherichia coli was observed in the haematology departments of two university hospitals in The Netherlands. Amplified fragment length polymorphism analysis revealed that this increase was not caused by the emergence of unique ciprofloxacinresistant clones. Determination of the presence of class 1 integrons indicated t...

Finding a place for mobile genetic elements

*Correspondence to: James O. McInerney; Email: [email protected] While it has become increasingly clear that the Tree of Life hypothesis has limitations in its ability to describe the evolution of all evolving entities on the planet, there has been a marked reluctance to move away from the tree-based language. Ironically, while modifying the idea of the Tree of Life to the extent that i...

In this issue of Mobile Genetic Elements

Because transposons are able to self-excise and self-insert into the genome, they can also be used as a tool for altering gene expression, especially in the case of transposon mutagenesis. Here, Meredith et al. describe a robust transposon mutagenesis system that they have created allowing for the creation of a large range of expression genotypes in S. aureus. This collection has allowed for th...

ACLAME: A CLAssification of Mobile genetic Elements

The ACLAME database (http://aclame.ulb.ac.be) is a collection and classification of prokaryotic mobile genetic elements (MGEs) from various sources, comprising all known phage genomes, plasmids and transposons. In addition to providing information on the full genomes and genetic entities, it aims to build a comprehensive classification of the functional modules of MGEs at the protein, gene and ...

Modelling the evolution of mobile genetic elements