Genetic exchange is common among bacteria, but its effect on population diversity during ecological differentiation remains controversial. A fundamental question is whether advantageous mutations lead to selection of clonal genomes or, as in sexual eukaryotes, sweep through populations on their own. Here we show that in two recently diverged populations of ocean bacteria, ecological differentiation has occurred akin to a sexual mechanism: a few genome regions have swept through subpopulations in a habitat specific manner, accompanied by gradual separation of gene pools as evidenced by increased habitat-specificity of the most recent recombinations. These findings reconcile previous, seemingly contradictory empirical observations of the genetic structure of bacterial populations, and point to a more unified process of differentiation in bacteria and sexual eukaryotes than previously imagined.

Phosphorothioate (PT) modification of DNA, with sulfur replacing a nonbridging phosphate oxygen, was recently discovered as a product of the dnd genes found in bacteria and archaea. Given our limited understanding of the biological function of PT modifications, including sequence context, genomic frequencies, and relationships to the diversity of dnd gene clusters, we undertook a quantitative study of PT modifications in prokaryotic genomes using a liquid chromatography-coupled tandem quadrupole mass spectrometry approach. The results revealed a diversity of unique PT sequence contexts and three discrete genomic frequencies in a wide range of bacteria. Metagenomic analyses of PT modifications revealed unique ecological distributions, and a phylogenetic comparison of dnd genes and PT sequence contexts strongly supports the horizontal transfer of dnd genes. These results are consistent with the involvement of PT modifications in a type of restriction-modification system with wide distribution in prokaryotes.DNA modification | bioanalytical chemistry | sulfur P hosphorothioate (PT) modification of DNA, in which sulfur replaces a nonbridging phosphate oxygen, was originally developed as an artificial means to stabilize oligodeoxynucleotides against nuclease degradation (1). However, we recently discovered that the dnd gene products incorporate sulfur into the DNA backbone as a PT in a sequence-and stereo-specific manner (2). Beginning with the original observation in Streptomyces lividans 1326 that the five-gene dnd cluster (dndA-E) caused DNA degradation during electrophoresis (3), the presence of dnd genes has been established in dozens of different bacteria and archaea (4). An emerging picture of Dnd protein function reveals that DndA acts as a cysteine desulfurase and assembles DndC as a 4Fe-4S cluster protein (5). DndC possesses ATP pyrophosphatase activity and is predicted to have PAPS reductase activity, whereas DndB has homology to a group of transcriptional regulators (4, 6). A DndD homologue in Pseudomonas fluorescens Pf0-1, SpfD, has ATPase activity possibly related to DNA structure alteration or nicking during PT incorporation (7).This progress in defining the biochemistry of PT modifications belies a lack of understanding of the biological function of PT modifications, such as the variety of sequence contexts, the distribution of modifications across prokaryotic genomes, and the relationship of PT sequence contexts to the diversity of known dnd gene clusters (4). We have approached this problem with a highly quantitative study of PT modifications in prokaryotic genomes using a liquid chromatography-coupled tandem quadrupole mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) approach. The results reveal a diversity of quantized PT sequence contexts consistent with a role for PT modifications as part of a restrictionmodification system. Results and DiscussionDevelopment of a Sensitive Method to Quantify PT Modifications in Bacterial Genomes. We approached the problem of defining the biological function of PT modifications by q...

Adaptive immunity is driven by the expansion, somatic hypermutation, and selection of B cell clones. Each clone is the progeny of a single B cell responding to antigen, with diversified Ig receptors. These receptors can now be profiled at large-scale by next-generation sequencing. Such data provide a window into the micro-evolutionary dynamics that drive successful immune responses and the dysregulation that occurs with aging or disease. Clonal relationships are not directly measured, but must be computationally inferred from these sequencing data. While several hierarchical clustering-based methods have been proposed, they vary in distance and linkage methods and have not yet been rigorously compared. Here we use a combination of human experimental and simulated data to characterize the performance of hierarchical clustering-based methods for partitioning sequences into clones. We find that single linkage clustering has high performance, with specificity, sensitivity, and positive predictive value (PPV) all over 99%, whereas other linkages result in a significant loss of sensitivity. Surprisingly, distance metrics that incorporate the biases of somatic hypermutation do not outperform simple Hamming distance. Although errors were more likely in sequences with short junctions, using the entire dataset to choose a single distance threshold for clustering is near optimal. Our results suggest that hierarchical clustering using single linkage with Hamming distance identifies clones with high confidence and provides a fully automated method for clonal grouping. The performance estimates we develop provide important context to interpret clonal analysis of repertoire sequencing data and allow for rigorous testing of other clonal grouping algorithms.

Adaptive radiations are important drivers of niche filling, since they rapidly adapt a single clade of organisms to ecological opportunities. Although thought to be common for animals and plants, adaptive radiations have remained difficult to document for microbes in the wild. Here we describe a recent adaptive radiation leading to fine-scale ecophysiological differentiation in the degradation of an algal glycan in a clade of closely related marine bacteria. Horizontal gene transfer is the primary driver in the diversification of the pathway leading to several ecophysiologically differentiated Vibrionaceae populations adapted to different physical forms of alginate. Pathway architecture is predictive of function and ecology, underscoring that horizontal gene transfer without extensive regulatory changes can rapidly assemble fully functional pathways in microbes.

BackgroundDifferent high-throughput nucleic acid sequencing platforms are currently available but a trade-off currently exists between the cost and number of reads that can be generated versus the read length that can be achieved.Methodology/Principal FindingsWe describe an experimental and computational pipeline yielding millions of reads that can exceed 200 bp with quality scores approaching that of traditional Sanger sequencing. The method combines an automatable gel-less library construction step with paired-end sequencing on a short-read instrument. With appropriately sized library inserts, mate-pair sequences can overlap, and we describe the SHERA software package that joins them to form a longer composite read.Conclusions/SignificanceThis strategy is broadly applicable to sequencing applications that benefit from low-cost high-throughput sequencing, but require longer read lengths. We demonstrate that our approach enables metagenomic analyses using the Illumina Genome Analyzer, with low error rates, and at a fraction of the cost of pyrosequencing.