Gene order phylogeny of the genus Prochlorococcus.
basic_science · Level V
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- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 19050756.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0003837 and PMC identifier PMC1567916.
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Abstract
BACKGROUND: Using gene order as a phylogenetic character has the potential to resolve previously unresolved species relationships. This character was used to resolve the evolutionary history within the genus Prochlorococcus, a group of marine cyanobacteria. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Orthologous gene sets and their genomic positions were identified from 12 species of Prochlorococcus and 1 outgroup species of Synechococcus. From this data, inversion and breakpoint distance-based phylogenetic trees were computed by GRAPPA and FastME. Statistical support of the resulting topology was obtained by application of a 50% jackknife resampling technique. The result was consistent and congruent with nucleotide sequence-based and gene-content based trees. Also, a previously unresolved clade was resolved, that of MIT9211 and SS120. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: This is the first study to use gene order data to resolve a bacterial phylogeny at the genus level. It suggests that the technique is useful in resolving the Tree of Life.