Mapping the Complex Transcriptional Landscape of the Phytopathogenic Bacterium Dickeya dadantii
Raphaël Forquet, Xuejiao Jiang, William Nasser, Florence Hommais, Sylvie Reverchon, Sam Meyer
Abstract
species. It may therefore significantly contribute to further progress in the field of phytopathogenicity. It is also one of the first reported applications of long-read Nanopore native RNA-seq in prokaryotes. Our findings yield insights into basal rules of coordination of transcription that might be valid for other bacteria and may raise interest in the field of microbiology in general. In particular, we demonstrate that gene expression is coordinated at the scale of transcription units rather than operons, which are larger functional genomic units capable of generating transcripts with variable gene composition for a fine-tuning of gene expression in response to environmental changes. In line with recent studies, our findings indicate that the canonical operon model is insufficient to explain the complexity of bacterial transcriptomes.