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Signatures of Natural Selection and Ecological Differentiation in Microbial Genomes

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Ecological Genomics

Part of the book series: Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology ((AEMB,volume 781))

Abstract

We live in a microbial world. Most of the genetic and metabolic diversity that exists on earth – and has existed for billions of years – is microbial. Making sense of this vast diversity is a daunting task, but one that can be approached systematically by analyzing microbial genome sequences. This chapter explores how the evolutionary forces of recombination and selection act to shape microbial genome sequences, leaving signatures that can be detected using comparative genomics and population-genetic tests for selection. I describe the major classes of tests, paying special attention to their relative strengths and weaknesses when applied to microbes. Specifically, I apply a suite of tests for selection to a set of closely-related bacterial genomes with different microhabitat preferences within the marine water column, shedding light on the genomic mechanisms of ecological differentiation in the wild. I will focus on the joint problem of simultaneously inferring the boundaries between microbial populations, and the selective forces operating within and between populations.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Département de sciences biologiques, Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada

    B. Jesse Shapiro

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  1. B. Jesse Shapiro
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Correspondence to B. Jesse Shapiro .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Département de Biologie, Institut de Biologie Intégrative et des Systèmes, Quebec, Québec, Canada

    Christian R. Landry

  2. Département de Biologie, Institut de Biologie Intégrative et des Systèmes, Quebec, Québec, Canada

    Nadia Aubin-Horth

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Shapiro, B.J. (2014). Signatures of Natural Selection and Ecological Differentiation in Microbial Genomes. In: Landry, C., Aubin-Horth, N. (eds) Ecological Genomics. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, vol 781. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7347-9_17

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