mBio. Taking the Gonococcus-Human Relationship to a Whole New Level: Implications for the Coevolution of Microbes and Humans

[Giuseppe]

[Source: mBio, full text: (LINK). Abstract, edited.]

Taking the Gonococcus-Human Relationship to a Whole New Level: Implications for the Coevolution of Microbes and Humans

1. William M. Shafer<SUP>a,b</SUP> and
2. Elizabeth A. Ohneck<SUP>a</SUP>

- Author Affiliations

1. Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia, USA,<SUP>a</SUP> and
2. Laboratories of Bacterial Pathogenesis, VA Medical Center, Atlanta, Georgia, USA<SUP>b</SUP>

1. Address correspondence to William M. Shafer, wshafer@emory.edu.

ABSTRACT


While horizontal gene transfer occurs frequently among bacterial species, evidence for the transfer of DNA from host to microbe is exceptionally rare. However, the recent report by Anderson and Seifert [mBio 2(1):e00005-11, 2011] provides evidence for such an event with the finding that 11% of Neisseria gonorrhoeae strains harbor a 685-bp sequence that is 98 to 100% identical to the human long interspersed nuclear element L1. While the function of this element in gonococci remains unclear, this finding significantly impacts our consideration of the coevolution of hosts and microbes, particularly that of humans and pathogens.
Footnotes

• Citation Shafer WM, Ohneck EA. 2011. Taking the gonococcus-human relationship to a whole new level: implications for the coevolution of microbes and humans. mBio 2(3):e00067-11. doi:10.1128/mBio.00067-11.

• Copyright ? 2011 Shafer and Ohneck.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License, which permits unrestricted noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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