Horizontal gene transfer in environmental microbes

This Wikipedia entry provides a reasonable overview of the significance and mechanisms of horizontal gene transfer. There is evidence, albeit controversial, that on the order of 145 genes in the human genome have been acquired from bacteria via horizontal gene transfer. This wiki article contains information on a number of methodologies one can use to analyze genes found in a genome for inferring that they came into the host by horizontal gene transfer. This page describes a research project to examine the role of surface adherence and bacterial motility in horizontal gene transfer. This page describes research on examining how horizontal gene transfer might be harnessed to make more effective bioremediation of hazardous chemicals. This article describes the acquisition, by a bacterium, of a genomic island by horizontal gene transfer that confers the ability to degrade polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. This database ranks sequences for their degree of being phylogenetically atypical, which is an indictor of being derived by horizontal gene transfer. This database analyzes genes for evidence of having a different nucleotide composition from the host organism, an indicator of horizontal gene transfer. This database has information on horizontal gene transfer within E. coli strains. This article presents evidence that CRISPR (clustered regularly interspersed short palindormic repeats)-Cas systems of prokaryotes do not appear to inhibit horizontal gene transfer. The Island Pick database uses tools of comparative genomics to identify large regions of horizontal gene transfer, called genomic islands, in bacteria. This tool looks for the presence of mobile genetic elements in bacteria, evidence of past horizontal gene transfer. This database contains information on known antibiotic resistance genes within genomes and provides guidelines to facilitate the annotation of newly found resistance genes. This website contains a large list of plasmids found in environmentally-relevant bacteria. This databases classifies mobile genetic elements from phage, plasmids and transposons. This website lists and organizes information about insertion sequence elements in prokaryotes.