Background: The bacterial chromosome may be used to stably maintain foreign DNA in the mega-base range. Integration into the chromosome circumvents issues such as plasmid replication, stability, incompatibility, and copy ...

Members of the genus Acinetobacter possess distinct plasmid types which provide effective platforms for the acquisition, evolution, and dissemination of antimicrobial resistance structures. Many plasmid-borne resistance ...

Bacteriophages have always been central for the evolution of bacteria. In this chapter, the transductive capacities of phages to mediate the transfer of either chromosomal or plasmid DNA among strains of lactic acid bacteria, ...

Horizontal gene transfer is crucial for the adaptation of microorganisms to environmental cues. The acidophilic, bioleaching bacterium Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans encodes an integrative-conjugative genetic element ...

In a previous paper we demonstrated that boar β-acrosin recombinant proteins were able to bind non-enzymatically to solubilized pig zona pellucida (ZP) glycoproteins. Here we report the participation of boar β-acrosin in ...

RecA-independent recombination events between short direct repeats, leading to deletion of the intervening sequences, were found to occur in two genetic models in the Escherichia coli K12 background. The first model was ...

B-cell-specific Moloney murine leukemia virus integration site 1 (Bmi-1) is a Polycomb group protein that is able to induce telomerase activity, enabling the immortalization of epithelial cells. Immortalized cells are more ...