Understanding the principles that govern community assemblages is a central goal of ecology. There is limited experimental evidence in natural settings showing that microbial assembly in communities are influenced by antagonistic interactions. We, therefore, analyzed antagonism among bacterial isolates from a taxonomically related bacterial guild obtained from five sites in sediments from a fresh water system. We hypothesized that if antagonistic interactions acted as a shaping force of the community assembly, then the frequency of resistance to antagonism among bacterial isolates originating from a given site would be higher than the resistance to conspecifics originating from a different assemblage. Antagonism assays were conducted between 78 thermoresistant isolates, of which 72 were Bacillus spp. Sensitive, resistant and antagonistic isolates co-occurred at each site, but the within-site frequency of resistance observed was higher than that observed when assessed across-sites. We found that antagonism results from bacteriocinlike substances aimed at the exclusion of conspecifics. More than 6000 interactions were scored and described by a directed network with hierarchical structure that exhibited properties that resembled a food chain, where the different Bacillus taxonomic groups occupied specific positions. For some tested interacting pairs, the unidirectional interaction could be explained by competition that inhibited growth or completely excluded one of the pair members. This is the first report on the prevalence and specificity of Bacillus interactions in a natural setting and provides evidence for the influence of bacterial antagonist interactions in the assemblage of a taxonomically related guild in local communities.

DEAD-box proteins are found in all domains of life and participate in almost all cellular processes that involve RNA. The presence of DEAD and Helicase_C conserved domains distinguish these proteins. DEAD-box proteins exhibit RNA-dependent ATPase activity in vitro, and several also show RNA helicase activity. In this study, we analyzed the distribution and architecture of DEAD-box proteins among bacterial genomes to gain insight into the evolutionary pathways that have shaped their history. We identified 1,848 unique DEAD-box proteins from 563 bacterial genomes. Bacterial genomes can possess a single copy DEAD-box gene, or up to 12 copies of the gene, such as in Shewanella. The alignment of 1,208 sequences allowed us to perform a robust analysis of the hallmark motifs of DEAD-box proteins and determine the residues that occur at high frequency, some of which were previously overlooked. Bacterial DEAD-box proteins do not generally contain a conserved C-terminal domain, with the exception of some members that possess a DbpA RNA-binding domain (RBD). Phylogenetic analysis showed a separation of DbpA-RBD-containing and DbpA-RBD-lacking sequences and revealed a group of DEAD-box protein genes that expanded mainly in the Proteobacteria. Analysis of DEAD-box proteins from Firmicutes and γ-Proteobacteria, was used to deduce orthologous relationships of the well-studied DEAD-box proteins from Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis. These analyses suggest that DbpA-RBD is an ancestral domain that most likely emerged as a specialized domain of the RNA-dependent ATPases. Moreover, these data revealed numerous events of gene family expansion and reduction following speciation.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00239-011-9441-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Entamoeba histolytica encodes four family B2 DNA polymerases that vary in amino acid length from 813 to 1279. These DNA polymerases contain a N-terminal domain with no homology to other proteins and a C-terminal domain with high amino acid identity to archetypical family B2 DNA polymerases. A phylogenetic analysis indicates that these family B2 DNA polymerases are grouped with DNA polymerases from transposable elements dubbed Polintons or Mavericks. In this work, we report the cloning and biochemical characterization of the smallest family B2 DNA polymerase from E. histolytica. To facilitate its characterization we subcloned its 660 amino acids C-terminal region that comprises the complete exonuclease and DNA polymerization domains, dubbed throughout this work as EhDNApolB2. We found that EhDNApolB2 displays remarkable strand displacement, processivity and efficiently bypasses the DNA lesions: 8-oxo guanosine and abasic site.Family B2 DNA polymerases from T. vaginalis, G. lambia and E. histolytica contain a Terminal Region Protein 2 (TPR2) motif twice the length of the TPR2 from φ29 DNA polymerase. Deletion studies demonstrate that as in φ29 DNA polymerase, the TPR2 motif of EhDNApolB2 is solely responsible of strand displacement and processivity. Interestingly the TPR2 of EhDNApolB2 is also responsible for efficient abasic site bypass. These data suggests that the 21 extra amino acids of the TPR2 motif may shape the active site of EhDNApolB2 to efficiently incorporate and extended opposite an abasic site. Herein we demonstrate that an open reading frame derived from Politons-Mavericks in parasitic protozoa encode a functional enzyme and our findings support the notion that the introduction of novel motifs in DNA polymerases can confer specialized properties to a conserved scaffold.