The early phase of a bacterial insertion sequence infection

Manuel Bichsel, Andrew D. Barbour and Andreas Wagner

Theoretical Population Biology, 2010, vol. 78, issue 4, 278-288

Abstract: Bacterial insertion sequences are the simplest form of autonomous mobile DNA. It is unknown whether they need to have beneficial effects to infect and persist in bacterial populations, or whether horizontal gene transfer suffices for their persistence. We address this question by using branching process models to investigate the critical, early phase of an insertion sequence infection. We find that the probability of a successful infection is low and depends linearly on the difference between the rate of horizontal gene transfer and the fitness cost of the insertion sequences. Our models show that the median time to extinction of an insertion sequence that dies out is very short, while the median time for a successful infection to reach a modest population size is very long. We conclude that horizontal gene transfer is strong enough to allow the persistence of insertion sequences, although infection is an erratic and slow process.

Keywords: Mobile DNA; Insertion sequence; Horizontal gene transfer; Branching process (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040580910000791
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:thpobi:v:78:y:2010:i:4:p:278-288

DOI: 10.1016/j.tpb.2010.08.003

Access Statistics for this article

Theoretical Population Biology is currently edited by Jeremy Van Cleve

More articles in Theoretical Population Biology from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().