Genetic surveys reveal the diversity of bacteria and lead to the questioning of species concepts used to categorize bacteria. One difficulty in defining bacterial species arises from the high rates of ...

When Kostas Konstantinidis proved that many bacteria—like plants and animals—are organized into species, he upended a long-held scientific belief. Scientists widely believed that bacteria, due ...

Bacteria need to be able to adapt to the changing and challenging environments in which they live to survive and multiply. One of the genetic processes by which they do this is transduction. In this ...

The study reconciles the previously conflicting evidence by showing that after these gene sweeps, recombination becomes less frequent between bacterial strains from different populations, yielding ...

For chromosomes, recombination is not just an effective means of generating genetic diversity. It's also crucial for proper segregation of chromosomes into germs cells.

Abstract Evolution of bacterial pathogen populations has been detected in a variety of ways including phenotypic tests, such as metabolic activity, reaction to antisera and drug resistance and ...

New research shows bacteria form distinct species and maintain cohesion through frequent DNA exchange via homologous recombination.