Endosymbiont gene functions impaired and rescued by polymerase infidelity at poly(A) tracts
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Among host-dependent bacteria that have evolved by extreme reductive genome evolution, long-term bacterial endosymbionts of insects have the smallest (160-790 kb) and most A + T-rich (>70%) bacterial genomes known to date. These genomes are riddled with poly(A) tracts, and 5-50% of genes contain tracts of 10 As or more. Here, we demonstrate transcriptional slippage at poly(A) tracts within genes of Buchnera aphidicola associated with aphids and Blochmannia pennsylvanicus associated with ants. Several tracts contain single frameshift deletions; these apparent pseudogenes showed patterns of constraint consistent with purifying selection on the encoded proteins. Transcriptional slippage yielded a heterogeneous population of transcripts with variable numbers of As in the tract. Across several frameshifted genes, including B. aphidicola cell wall biosynthesis genes and a B. pennsylvanicus histidine biosynthesis gene, 12-50% of transcripts contained corrected reading frames that could potentially yield full-length proteins. In situ immunostaining confirmed the production of the cell wall biosynthetic enzyme UDP-N-acetylmuramyl pentapeptide synthase encoded by the frameshifted murF gene. Simulation studies indicated an overrepresentation of poly(A) tracts in endosymbiont genomes relative to other A + T-rich bacterial genomes. Polymerase infidelity at poly(A) tracts rescues the functionality of genes with frameshift mutations and, conversely, reduces the efficiency of expression for in-frame genes carrying poly(A) regions. These features of homopolymeric tracts could be exploited to manipulate gene expression in small synthetic genomes.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".