Microbiology Journal Club: Genomic view of population-level heterogeneity скачать в хорошем качестве

Microbiology Journal Club: Genomic view of population-level heterogeneity

We know that bacteria are important members of ecosystems, but we don’t have a good handle on the population structure of bacterial communities in different ecosystems. How should we define genetically and ecologically distinct populations? How do these populations vary over time? In this paper, researchers use single-cell genomics and metagenomics to investigate bacterial population structure in four freshwater lakes. They specifically focus on particular lineages of Actinobacteria and Alphaproteobacteria. First, they compare single-cell genomes from these lineages and assess sequence similarity across the genomes. Then, they use these genomes as references to recruit reads from a metagenome time series. They find “sequence-discrete populations”, some of which appear to be ecologically distinct as well. These findings and methods contribute to our understanding of bacterial communities and microbial ecology in general. Link to paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s4139...