Excited to finally share our work on 🚨 Borgs 🖖 out today @Nature 🚨! Giant linear genetic elements that we discovered in Archaea from multiple environments, that could play a previously unrecognized role in controlling greenhouse gas emissions.(1/n) nature.com/articles/s41586-0…
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Original thread can be found here x.com/themicrobeguy/status/1… and more details on analyses we've added below! (2/n)
🚨 New Paper alert 🚨! This one is dedicated to an archaeal mystery. Giant linear genetic elements we discovered in multiple environments that may play a previously unrecognized role in controlling greenhouse gas emissions: the Borgs 🖖! Short thread below
biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
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First, we added more granular comparisons of Borgs to linear bacterial plasmids, showing Borg protein profiles are quite different those of linear plasmids. Few proteins were shared between them beyond methyltransferases, kinases, & other enzymes unrelated to replication (3/n)
Oct 19, 2022 · 6:40 PM UTC
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Looking at their hosts, we compared the Methanoperedens within samples containing Borgs to other environments, looking at both ribosomal protein phylogeny and whole genome similarity. So far, the Methanoperedens we report seem to be distinct at the species level. (4/n)
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Now looking further at the abundance of specific Borgs and Methanoperedens genomes in our samples, we found that groups of related Methanoperedens correlate with groups of Borgs across a set of 50 samples, in analysis done with @jwestrob (5/n)
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Given that Borgs are up to 1Mb in length, and copy numbers compared to Methanoperedens genome can vary between 2:1 and 8:1, it is quite possible that there is more Borg than host DNA in some cells! (6/n)
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You can find some beautiful commentary from @ChristianRinke here. "It may be that, in contrast to those in Star Trek, the Borgs in our Universe use assimilation to save rather than to conquer a world." (7/n) nature.com/articles/d41586-0…
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