On the evolutionary significance of horizontal gene transfers in plants

First author: David A. Wickell; Affiliations: Boyce Thompson Institute (博伊斯·汤姆森研究所): Ithaca, USA

Corresponding author: Fay‐Wei Li

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) has long been seen as a crucial process in the evolution of prokaryotic species, but until recently it was thought to have little, if any, effect on the evolution of eukaryotic life forms. Detecting and describing HGT events in eukaryotes is difficult, making this phenomenon at times controversial. However, modern advances in genomics and bioinformatics have radically altered our view of HGT in eukaryotes, especially in plants. It now appears that HGT to and from plant lineages is more common than previously suspected. Importantly, the transfer of functional nuclear genes with adaptive significance has been reported in numerous taxa. Here we review several recent studies that have found evidence of the horizontal transfer of nuclear genes, and argue that HGT has undoubtedly had profound impacts on plant evolution as a whole.

水平基因转移HGT早就被认为是真核生物演化的重要进程之一，但一直到前不久，普遍认为HGT对于真核生物生命形式演化的影响并不大。在真核生物中鉴定并识别HGT事件并不容易，使得该现象有时存在争议。然而，得益于现代基因组学和生物信息学的快速发展，我们正快速积累有关HGT在真核生物中的认识，尤其是植物中。目前来说，向植物或来自植物的HGT比之前所猜测的更加常见。重要的是，在很多物种中都报道了具有明显适应性功能的核基因转移。本文中，作者综述了最近有关核基因水平转移的一些研究，并且讨论了HGT对于植物演化的深远影响。

通讯：Friedrich Kragler (https://www.fernway.net)

个人简介：2005-2009年， 国立台湾大学，学士；2010-2015年，杜克大学，博士；2015-2016年，加州大学伯克利分校、杜克大学，博士后；2016-2017年，苏黎世大学，博士后。

研究方向：蕨类植物基因组；植物-蓝藻共生系统。

doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.16022

Journal: New Phytologist

Published date: July 26, 2019