TY - JOUR T1 - Rapid Pathway Evolution Facilitated by Horizontal Gene Transfers across Prokaryotic Lineages A1 - Iwasaki, Wataru A1 - Takagi, Toshihisa Y1 - 2009/03/06 N2 - Author Summary Many biological functions, from energy metabolism to antibiotic resistance, are carried out by biological pathways that require a number of cooperatively functioning genes. Hence, underlying mechanisms in the evolution of biological pathways are of particular interest. However, compared to the evolution of individual genes, which has been well studied, the evolution of biological pathways is far less understood. In this study, we used the abundant genome sequences available today and a novel algorithm we recently developed to trace the evolutionary history of prokaryotic metabolic pathways and to analyze how these pathways emerged. We found that the pathways have experienced significantly rapid acquisition, which would play a key role in eliminating the difficulty in holding genes during the course of pathway evolution. In addition, the emergence of novel pathways was suggested to have occurred more contemporaneously than expected across different phylogenetic clades. Based on these observations, we propose that novel pathway evolution can be facilitated by bidirectional horizontal gene transfers in prokaryotic communities. This simple model may approach the question of how biological pathways requiring a number of cooperatively functioning genes can be obtained and are the core event within the evolution of biological pathways in prokaryotes. JF - PLOS Genetics JA - PLOS Genetics VL - 5 IS - 3 UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1000402 SP - e1000402 EP - PB - Public Library of Science M3 - doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1000402 ER -