Widespread Recombination Throughout Wolbachia Genomes

Recombination in Wolbachia

Wolbachia are widely distributed intracellular bacteria that cause a number of reproductive alterations in their eukaryotic hosts. Such alterations include the induction of parthenogenesis, feminization, cytoplasmic incompatibility, and male killing [1-11]. These important bacteria may play a role in rapid speciation in insects [12-14], and there is growing interest in their potential uses as t...

Wolbachia Genomes: Insights into an Intracellular Lifestyle

The genome sequence of the Wolbachia endosymbiont that infects the nematode Brugia malayi has recently been determined together with three partial Wolbachia genomes from different Drosophila species. These data along with the previously published Wolbachia genome from Drosophila melanogaster provide new insights into how this endosymbiont has managed to become so successful.

Recombination in wolbachia endosymbionts of filarial nematodes?

Widespread mitovirus sequences in plant genomes

The exploration of the evolution of RNA viruses has been aided recently by the discovery of copies of fragments or complete genomes of non-retroviral RNA viruses (Non-retroviral Endogenous RNA Viral Elements, or NERVEs) in many eukaryotic nuclear genomes. Among the most prominent NERVEs are partial copies of the RNA dependent RNA polymerase (RdRP) of the mitoviruses in plant mitochondrial genom...

Widespread Recognition of the Phenomena of Extensive and Complex Patterns of Transcription throughout the Genomes of Many Species

Within the past 5 years, multiple large-scale, unbiased experimental approaches have identified surprisingly large amounts of RNA transcription far exceeding that estimated to be required for the production of messenger RNA for known proteins. This transcriptional “dark matter” has been observed in (1) large-scale full-length cDNA sequencing (Okazaki et al. 2002; Carninci et al. 2005), (2) mapp...