The DOI matches its Crossref record; 125 of the 125 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Streamlining and Simplification of Microbial Genome Architecture
Abstract
The genomes of unicellular species, particularly prokaryotes, are greatly reduced in size and simplified in terms of gene structure relative to those of multicellular eukaryotes. Arguments proposed to explain this disparity include selection for metabolic efficiency and elevated rates of deletion in microbes, but the evidence in support of these hypotheses is at best equivocal. An alternative explanation based on fundamental population-genetic principles is proposed here. By increasing the mutational target sizes of associated genes, most forms of nonfunctional DNA are opposed by weak selection. Free-living microbial species have elevated effective population sizes, and the consequent reduction in the power of random genetic drift appears to be sufficient to enable natural selection to inhibit the accumulation of excess DNA. This hypothesis provides a potentially unifying explanation for the continuity in genomic scaling from prokaryotes to multicellular eukaryotes, the divergent patterns of mitochondrial evolution in animals and land plants, and various aspects of genomic modification in microbial endosymbionts.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Escherichia coli and Salmonella :cellular and molecular biology
Neidhardt, F. C. (1996) · ASM Press eBooks · Cited by 8,197
Selfish DNA: the ultimate parasite
Orgel, L. E., & Crick, F. H. C. (1980) · Nature · doi:10.1038/284604a0 · Cited by 2,156
Cellular energy utilization and molecular origin of standard metabolic rate in mammals
Rolfe, D. F., & Brown, G. C. (1997) · Physiological Reviews · doi:10.1152/physrev.1997.77.3.731 · Cited by 2,021
Selfish genes, the phenotype paradigm and genome evolution
Doolittle, W. F., & Sapienza, C. (1980) · Nature · doi:10.1038/284601a0 · Cited by 1,829
Global Dispersal of Free-Living Microbial Eukaryote Species
Finlay, B. J. (2002) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1070710 · Cited by 1,825
The effect of linkage on limits to artificial selection
Hill, W. G., & Robertson, A. (1966) · Genetical Research · doi:10.1017/s0016672300010156 · Cited by 1,823
Gray, M. W., Burger, G., & Lang, B. F. (1999) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.283.5407.1476 · Cited by 1,719
The origins of genome complexity
Lynch, M., & Conery, J. S. (2003) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1089370 · Cited by 1,698
Self-citationThe effect of linkage on limits to artificial selection
HILL, W. G., & ROBERTSON, A. (2007) · Genetics Research · doi:10.1017/s001667230800949x · Cited by 1,561
The Widespread Impact of Mammalian MicroRNAs on mRNA Repression and Evolution
Farh, K. K.-H., Grimson, A., Jan, C., Lewis, B. P., Johnston, W. K., Lim, L. P., Burge, C. B., & Bartel, D. P. (2005) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1121158 · Cited by 1,484
Cited by
The Black Queen Hypothesis: Evolution of Dependencies through Adaptive Gene Loss
Morris, J. J., Lenski, R. E., & Zinser, E. R. (2012) · mBio · doi:10.1128/mbio.00036-12 · Cited by 1,208
Horizontal gene transfer and adaptive evolution in bacteria.
Arnold, B. J., Huang, I.-T., & Hanage, W. P. (2022) · Nature Reviews Microbiology · doi:10.1038/s41579-021-00650-4 · Cited by 869
Albalat, R., & Cañestro, C. (2016) · Nature Reviews Genetics · doi:10.1038/nrg.2016.39 · Cited by 775
Implications of streamlining theory for microbial ecology
Giovannoni, S. J., Cameron Thrash, J., & Temperton, B. (2014) · The ISME Journal · doi:10.1038/ismej.2014.60 · Cited by 853
The bioenergetic costs of a gene
Lynch, M., & Marinov, G. K. (2015) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1514974112 · Cited by 600
Self-citation
Metadata
- Authors
- Lynch, M.
- Venue
- Annual Review of Microbiology
- Publisher
- Annual Reviews
- Published
- 2006-10-01
- Volume
- 60
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 327-349
- ISSN
- 0066-4227 (ISSN-L)
- 1545-3251
- OpenAlex
- W2137475545
- Cited by
- 256
- References
- 125
- FWCI
- 0.76
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Streamlining and Simplification of Microbial Genome Architecture. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1146/annurev.micro.60.080805.142300
- The paper
- Lynch, M. (2006). Streamlining and Simplification of Microbial Genome Architecture. Annual Review of Microbiology. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.micro.60.080805.142300
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
