Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Search research articles

Related Experiment Videos

Compositional discordance between prokaryotic plasmids and host chromosomes.

Mark W J van Passel¹, Aldert Bart, Angela C M Luyf

¹Academic Medical Center, Department of Medical Microbiology, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. m.w.vanpassel@amc.uva.nl

|February 17, 2006

Summary

Plasmid DNA composition typically differs from host genomes, challenging the idea of a stable host-plasmid relationship. This suggests plasmids may have an indiscriminate lifestyle, facilitating horizontal gene transfer.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

First detection and autochthonous transmission of monkeypox virus clade Ib in the Netherlands, October to November, 2025.

Euro surveillance : bulletin Europeen sur les maladies transmissibles = European communicable disease bulletin·2026

Same author

ENCORE: a practical implementation to improve reproducibility and transparency of computational research.

Nature communications·2024

Same author

Nationwide upsurge in invasive disease in the context of longitudinal surveillance of carriage and invasive <i>Streptococcus pyogenes</i> 2009-2023, the Netherlands: a molecular epidemiological study.

Journal of clinical microbiology·2024

Same author

A conserved complex lipid signature marks human muscle aging and responds to short-term exercise.

Nature aging·2024

Same author

Systematic evaluation of B-cell clonal family inference approaches.

BMC immunology·2024

Same author

TCRβ clones in muscle tissue share structural features in patients with idiopathic inflammatory myopathy and are associated with disease activity.

Frontiers in immunology·2024

Area of Science:

Genomics
Molecular Biology
Microbiology

Background:

Plasmids often rely on host machinery, implying a stable relationship and similar DNA composition.
However, plasmids are key in horizontal gene transfer, suggesting potential DNA composition differences.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the relationship between plasmid and host genome dinucleotide composition.
To understand the implications for plasmid-host interactions and evolution.

Main Methods:

Comparative analysis of dinucleotide frequencies (genome signature) between 230 plasmid sequences and their respective host genomes.

Main Results:

Plasmid genome signatures were generally dissimilar to their host genomes.

Related Experiment Videos

This finding contradicts the expectation of compositional similarity due to host-driven amelioration.

Conclusions:

Plasmid genome composition does not typically resemble that of their hosts.
This suggests a less stable plasmid-host relationship or absence of amelioration, supporting an indiscriminate lifestyle for plasmids.