{"ddc":["570"],"acknowledgement":"This study was supported by European Research Council ERC CoG 2014 – EVOLHGT,\r\nunder the grant number 648440.\r\n\r\nIt is a pleasure to thank the many people who made this thesis possible.\r\nI would like to first thank my advisor, Jonathan Paul Bollback for providing guidance in\r\nall aspects of my life, encouragement, sound advice, and good teaching over the last six\r\nyears.\r\nI would also like to thank the members of my dissertation committee – Călin C. Guet\r\nand John F. Baines – not only for their time and guidance, but for their intellectual\r\ncontributions to my development as a scientist.\r\nI would like to thank Flavia Gama and Rodrigo Redondo who have taught me all the\r\nskills in the laboratory with their graciousness and friendship. Also special thanks to\r\nBollback group for their support and for providing a stimulating and fun environment:\r\nIsabella Tomanek, Fabienne Jesse, Claudia Igler, and Pavel Payne.\r\nJerneja Beslagic is not only an amazing assistant, she also has a smile brighter and\r\nwarmer than the sunshine, bringing happiness to every moment. Always keep your light\r\nNeja, I will miss our invaluable chatters a lot.","month":"12","publication_identifier":{"issn":["2663-337X"]},"abstract":[{"lang":"eng","text":"Horizontal gene transfer (HGT), the lateral acquisition of genes across existing species\r\nboundaries, is a major evolutionary force shaping microbial genomes that facilitates\r\nadaptation to new environments as well as resistance to antimicrobial drugs. As such,\r\nunderstanding the mechanisms and constraints that determine the outcomes of HGT\r\nevents is crucial to understand the dynamics of HGT and to design better strategies to\r\novercome the challenges that originate from it.\r\nFollowing the insertion and expression of a newly transferred gene, the success of an\r\nHGT event will depend on the fitness effect it has on the recipient (host) cell. Therefore,\r\npredicting the impact of HGT on the genetic composition of a population critically\r\ndepends on the distribution of fitness effects (DFE) of horizontally transferred genes.\r\nHowever, to date, we have little knowledge of the DFE of newly transferred genes, and\r\nhence little is known about the shape and scale of this distribution.\r\nIt is particularly important to better understand the selective barriers that determine\r\nthe fitness effects of newly transferred genes. In spite of substantial bioinformatics\r\nefforts to identify horizontally transferred genes and selective barriers, a systematic\r\nexperimental approach to elucidate the roles of different selective barriers in defining\r\nthe fate of a transfer event has largely been absent. Similarly, although the fact that\r\nenvironment might alter the fitness effect of a horizontally transferred gene may seem\r\nobvious, little attention has been given to it in a systematic experimental manner.\r\nIn this study, we developed a systematic experimental approach that consists of\r\ntransferring 44 arbitrarily selected Salmonella typhimurium orthologous genes into an\r\nEscherichia coli host, and estimating the fitness effects of these transferred genes at a\r\nconstant expression level by performing competition assays against the wild type.\r\nIn chapter 2, we performed one-to-one competition assays between a mutant strain\r\ncarrying a transferred gene and the wild type strain. By using flow cytometry we\r\nestimated selection coefficients for the transferred genes with a precision level of 10-3,and obtained the DFE of horizontally transferred genes. We then investigated if these\r\nfitness effects could be predicted by any of the intrinsic properties of the genes, namely,\r\nfunctional category, degree of complexity (protein-protein interactions), GC content,\r\ncodon usage and length. Our analyses revealed that the functional category and length\r\nof the genes act as potential selective barriers. Finally, using the same procedure with\r\nthe endogenous E. coli orthologs of these 44 genes, we demonstrated that gene dosage is\r\nthe most prominent selective barrier to HGT.\r\nIn chapter 3, using the same set of genes we investigated the role of environment on the\r\nsuccess of HGT events. Under six different environments with different levels of stress\r\nwe performed more complex competition assays, where we mixed all 44 mutant strains\r\ncarrying transferred genes with the wild type strain. To estimate the fitness effects of\r\ngenes relative to wild type we used next generation sequencing. We found that the DFEs\r\nof horizontally transferred genes are highly dependent on the environment, with\r\nabundant gene–by-environment interactions. Furthermore, we demonstrated a\r\nrelationship between average fitness effect of a gene across all environments and its\r\nenvironmental variance, and thus its predictability. Finally, in spite of the fitness effects\r\nof genes being highly environment-dependent, we still observed a common shape of\r\nDFEs across all tested environments."}],"has_accepted_license":"1","degree_awarded":"PhD","_id":"1121","status":"public","oa_version":"Published Version","citation":{"short":"H. Acar, Selective Barriers to Horizontal Gene Transfer, Institute of Science and Technology Austria, 2016.","ista":"Acar H. 2016. Selective barriers to horizontal gene transfer. Institute of Science and Technology Austria.","chicago":"Acar, Hande. “Selective Barriers to Horizontal Gene Transfer.” Institute of Science and Technology Austria, 2016.","ama":"Acar H. Selective barriers to horizontal gene transfer. 2016.","ieee":"H. Acar, “Selective barriers to horizontal gene transfer,” Institute of Science and Technology Austria, 2016.","apa":"Acar, H. (2016). <i>Selective barriers to horizontal gene transfer</i>. Institute of Science and Technology Austria.","mla":"Acar, Hande. <i>Selective Barriers to Horizontal Gene Transfer</i>. Institute of Science and Technology Austria, 2016."},"file":[{"access_level":"closed","relation":"main_file","file_size":3682711,"date_created":"2019-08-13T11:17:50Z","file_id":"6814","checksum":"94bbbc754c36115bf37f8fc11fad43c4","creator":"dernst","date_updated":"2019-08-13T11:17:50Z","file_name":"PhDThesis_HandeAcar_1230.pdf","content_type":"application/pdf"},{"file_size":3682711,"access_level":"open_access","relation":"main_file","date_created":"2021-02-22T11:51:13Z","checksum":"94bbbc754c36115bf37f8fc11fad43c4","creator":"dernst","success":1,"file_id":"9184","date_updated":"2021-02-22T11:51:13Z","content_type":"application/pdf","file_name":"2016_Thesis_HandeAcar.pdf"}],"date_created":"2018-12-11T11:50:16Z","author":[{"id":"2DDF136A-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87","full_name":"Acar, Hande","last_name":"Acar","orcid":"0000-0003-1986-9753","first_name":"Hande"}],"supervisor":[{"orcid":"0000-0002-4624-4612","last_name":"Bollback","full_name":"Bollback, Jonathan P","id":"2C6FA9CC-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87","first_name":"Jonathan P"}],"day":"01","title":"Selective barriers to horizontal gene transfer","publisher":"Institute of Science and Technology Austria","department":[{"_id":"JoBo"}],"publication_status":"published","date_updated":"2023-09-07T11:42:26Z","ec_funded":1,"article_processing_charge":"No","type":"dissertation","page":"75","alternative_title":["ISTA Thesis"],"year":"2016","publist_id":"6239","file_date_updated":"2021-02-22T11:51:13Z","date_published":"2016-12-01T00:00:00Z","user_id":"c635000d-4b10-11ee-a964-aac5a93f6ac1","project":[{"grant_number":"648440","name":"Selective Barriers to Horizontal Gene Transfer","call_identifier":"H2020","_id":"2578D616-B435-11E9-9278-68D0E5697425"}],"language":[{"iso":"eng"}],"oa":1}