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Relative Time Inference Using Lateral Gene Transfers

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Environmental Microbial Evolution

Part of the book series: Methods in Molecular Biology ((MIMB,volume 2569))

Abstract

Many organisms are able to incorporate exogenous DNA into their genomes. This process, called lateral gene transfer (LGT), has the potential to benefit the recipient organism by providing useful coding sequences, such as antibiotic resistance genes or enzymes which expand the organism’s metabolic niche. For evolutionary biologists, LGTs have often been considered a nuisance because they complicate the reconstruction of the underlying species tree that many analyses aim to recover. However, LGT events between distinct organisms harbor information on the relative divergence time of the donor and recipient lineages. As a result transfers provide a novel and as yet mostly unexplored source of information to determine the order of divergence of clades, with the potential for absolute dating if linked to the fossil record.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Australian Centre for Ecogenomics, School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    Adrián A. Davín & Philip Hugenholtz

  2. Department of Biological Physics, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary

    Dominik Schrempf & Gergely J. Szöllősi

  3. School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

    Tom A. Williams

  4. MTA-ELTE “Lendület” Evolutionary Genomics Research Group, Budapest, Hungary

    Gergely J. Szöllősi

  5. Institute of Evolution, Centre for Ecological Research, Budapest, Hungary

    Gergely J. Szöllősi

Authors
  1. Adrián A. Davín
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  2. Dominik Schrempf
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  3. Tom A. Williams
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  4. Philip Hugenholtz
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  5. Gergely J. Szöllősi
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Life Sciences, Earth and Environmental Sciences Programme, and State Key Laboratory of Agrobiotechnology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China

    Haiwei Luo

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© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature

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Davín, A.A., Schrempf, D., Williams, T.A., Hugenholtz, P., Szöllősi, G.J. (2022). Relative Time Inference Using Lateral Gene Transfers. In: Luo, H. (eds) Environmental Microbial Evolution. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2569. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-2691-7_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-2691-7_4

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  • Publisher Name: Humana, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-0716-2690-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-0716-2691-7

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