Genome evolution in bacteria isolated from million-year-old subseafloor sediment
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Beneath the seafloor, microbial life subsists in isolation from the surface world under persistent energy limitation. The nature and extent of genomic evolution in subseafloor microbes has been unknown. Here we show that the genomes of Thalassospira bacterial populations cultured from million-year-old subseafloor sediments evolve by point mutation, with a relatively low rate of homologous recombination and a high frequency of pseudogenes. Ratios of synonymous to non-synonymous mutation rates correlate with the accumulation of pseudogenes, consistent with a dominant role for genetic drift in the subseafloor strains, but not in type strains of Thalassospira isolated from the surface world. Our findings demonstrate that the long term physical isolation of these bacteria, in the absence of recombination, has resulted in clonal populations that evolve consistent with ‘Mullers Ratchet’, whereby reduced access to novel genetic material from neighbors has resulted in fixation of new mutations that accumulate in genomes over millions of years. Significance statement The nature and extent of genomic evolution in subseafloor microbial populations subsisting for millions of years below the seafloor is unknown. Subseafloor populations have ultra-slow metabolic rates that are hypothesized to restrict reproduction and, consequently, the spread of new traits. Our findings demonstrate that genomes of cultivated bacterial strains from the genus Thalassospira isolated from million-year-old abyssal sediment exhibit greatly reduced levels of homologous recombination, elevated numbers of pseudogenes, and genome-wide evidence of relaxed purifying selection. These substitutions and pseudogenes are fixed into the population, suggesting the genome evolution of these bacteria has been dominated by genetic drift, whereby under long-term physical isolation in small population sizes, and in the absence of homologous recombination, newly acquired mutations accumulate in the genomes of clonal populations over millions of years.
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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) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 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 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
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".