发信人: doggiebear (doggiebear), 信区: Biology
标 题: Re: Second Paper - Random Journal Club
发信站: Unknown Space - 未名空间 (Sat Oct 25 16:04:20 2003) WWW-POST

This is an interesting paper because it elucidated how much information the
comparative genomics can tell us. In this paper, the authors discovered ten
new mycobacteriaphages, sequenced their genome and compared their genomes with
each other. The conclusion is revealing.

1) It shows the mycobacteriaphage genomes are highly mosaic, which means in
some part of the genome the sequence is homologous, while in other area, it is
not. This result shows there is significant horizontal gene transfer among
bacteriaphages and maybe also between phage and their hosts.

2) Because there no linkers regions between genes are found, the results favor
the model that this mosaicity was generated by illegitimate recombination.

3) The result on origins of phage diversity not only gives us clues on phage
evolution, but also on bacteria evolution. Phage may bring virulent genes to
their bacteria host. Actually from this work, they found these phages code
some genes whose functions are very interesting.

4) Phage genomes, becuase of its small size, offer us a rapid way to compare
genomes and study evolution. Conclusions from phage genome studies may be
extanded to evolution theory in general. Probably we can get a clue on the
earliest event during life evolution.


I have some questions after reading this paper:


1) how this illegimate recombination takes place? what is its molecular
mechanism?

2) What role the illegimate recombination plays in the evolution other
viruses? Does similar process take place in the earliest step of evolution,
which results in the diversification of life forms?

3) How significant is the role of phage and other viruses play during the
evolution course?


--
I will vote a democrat even he is a dog.
Liberalism is something to be proud of!
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