Reverse transcriptase-related enzymes are associated with horizontal chromosome transfer in an asexual pathogen

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1 Department of Computer Science and Plant Sciences Institute, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, United States
2 Department of Computer Science, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, United States
3 Department of Agronomy, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, United States
4 Crop, Soil and Environmental Sciences, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas, United States
5 Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, United States
6 National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research, US Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Peoria, Illinois, United States
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.1324v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Computational Biology, Genetics, Genomics, Molecular Biology, Mycology
Keywords
Asexual reproduction, Horizontal chromosome transfer, Duplication-induced mutation, Reverse transcriptase-related enzymes, Supernumerary chromosomes, Fusarium virguliforme, Soybean sudden death syndrome
Copyright
© 2015 Huang et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Huang X, Das A, Sahu BB, Srivastava SK, Leandro LF, O'Donnell K, Bhattacharyya MK. 2015. Reverse transcriptase-related enzymes are associated with horizontal chromosome transfer in an asexual pathogen. PeerJ PrePrints 3:e1324v1

Abstract

Supernumerary chromosomes have been shown to transfer horizontally from one isolate to another. However, the mechanism by which horizontal chromosome transfer (HCT) occurs is unknown. In this study, we compared the genomes of 11 isolates comprising six Fusarium species that cause soybean sudden death syndrome (SDS) or bean root rot (BRR), and detected numerous instances of HCT in supernumerary chromosomes. We also identified a statistically significant number (21 standard deviations above the mean) of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the supernumerary chromosomes between isolates of the asexual pathogen F. virguliforme. Supernumerary chromosomes carried reverse transcriptase-related genes (RVT); the presence of long RVT open reading frames (ORFs) in the supernumerary chromosome was correlated with the presence of two or more chromosome copies with a significant number of SNPs between them. Our results suggest that supernumerary chromosomes transfer horizontally via an RNA intermediate. Understanding the mechanism by which HCT occurs will have a profound impact on understanding evolution and applying biotechnology as well as accepting HCT as a natural source of genetic variation.

Author Comment

This is a submission to PeerJ for review.