Vertical Inheritance Facilitates Interspecies Diversification in Biosynthetic Gene Clusters and Specialized Metabolites
Alexander B. Chase, Douglas Sweeney, Mitchell N. Muskat, Dulce G. Guillén-Matus, Paul R. Jensen
Abstract
Microbial natural products are traditionally exploited for their pharmaceutical potential, yet our understanding of the evolutionary processes driving BGC evolution and compound diversification remain poorly developed. While HGT is recognized as an integral driver of BGC distributions, we find that the effects of vertical inheritance on BGC diversification had direct implications for species-level specialized metabolite production. As such, understanding the degree of genetic variation that corresponds to species delineations can enhance natural product discovery efforts. Resolving the evolutionary relationships between closely related strains and specialized metabolism can also facilitate our understanding of the ecological roles of small molecules in structuring the environmental distribution of microbes.