Linguistic Analysis of Genomic Islands Revealed Recent Acquisition of Genetic Materials by Mycobacterium tuberculosis from alpha-Proteobacteria

Important genes may flux among bacteria by horizontal transfer and trigger substantial evolutionary changes. Novel genome linguistic and visualization approaches helped to identify genomic islands in Mycobacterium tuberculosis and trace their origin down to alpha-Proteobacteria. The identified genomic islands are distinctive from prophage inserts common for Mycobacteria. Donor-recipient relationships were visualized for the analysis on a two-dimensional map. A database of genomic islands found in bacterial chromosomes has been created and it is freely available on-line at http://anjie.bi.up.ac.za/geidb/geidb-home.php.