Replacement and Parallel Simplification of Nonhomologous Proteinases Maintain Venom Phenotypes in Rear-Fanged Snakes.

Novel phenotypes are commonly associated with gene duplications and neofunctionalization, less documented are the cases of phenotypic maintenance through the recruitment of novel genes. Proteolysis is the primary toxic character of many snake venoms, and ADAM metalloproteinases, named snake venom metalloproteinases (SVMPs), are largely recognized as the major effectors of this phenotype. However, by investigating original transcriptomes from 58 species of advanced snakes (Caenophidia) across their phylogeny, we discovered that a different enzyme, matrix metalloproteinase (MMP), is actually the dominant venom component in three tribes (Tachymenini, Xenodontini, and Conophiini) of rear-fanged snakes (Dipsadidae).

Brazilian-adapted soybean Bradyrhizobium strains uncover IS elements with potential impact on biological nitrogen fixation.

Bradyrhizobium diazoefficiens CPAC 7 and Bradyrhizobium japonicum CPAC 15 are broadly used in commercial inoculants in Brazil, contributing to most of the nitrogen required by the soybean crop. These strains differ in their symbiotic properties: CPAC 7 is more efficient in fixing nitrogen, whereas CPAC 15 is more competitive. Comparative genomics revealed many transposases close to genes associated with symbiosis in the symbiotic island of these strains.

An Efficient Approach to Explore and Discriminate Anomalous Regions in Bacterial Genomes Based on Maximum Entropy.

Recently, there has been an increase in the number of whole bacterial genomes sequenced, mainly due to the advancing of next-generation sequencing technologies. In face of this, there is a need to provide new analytical alternatives that can follow this advance. Given our current knowledge about the genomic plasticity of bacteria and that those genomic regions can uncover important features about this microorganism, our goal was to develop a fast methodology based on maximum entropy (ME) to guide the researcher to regions that could be prioritized during the analysis.

Tn, a Novel Transposon Carrying Pyocin S8 Genes Encoding a Bacteriocin with Activity against Carbapenemase-Producing Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

A novel transposon belonging to the Tn-like family was identified on the chromosome of a commensal strain of sequence type 2343 (ET02). Tn is 7,367 bp long and harbors eight open reading frames (ORFs), an ATPase (IS family), a transposase (DDE catalytic type), a Tn resolvase, three hypothetical proteins, and genes encoding the new pyocin S8 with its immunity protein. We show that pyocin S8 displays activity against carbapenemase-producing , including IMP-1, SPM-1, VIM-1, GES-5, and KPC-2 producers.