Impact of natural transformation on the acquisition of novel genes in bacteria

Natural transformation is the only process of gene exchange under the exclusive control of the recipient bacteria. It has often been considered as a source of novel genes but quantitative assessments of this claim are lacking. To investigate the potential role of natural transformation in gene acquisition, we analysed a large collection of genomes of Acinetobacter baumannii (Ab) and Legionella pneumophila (Lp) for which transformation rates were experimentally determined. Natural transformation rates are weakly correlated with genome size. But they are negatively associated with gene flow in both species. This might result from a negative balance between transformation’s ability to cure the chromosome from mobile genetic elements (MGEs), resulting in gene loss, and its facilitation of gene acquisition. By focusing on the latter, we found that transformation was significantly associated with small gene acquisition events while MGEs-driven gene acquisition tend to be associated with larger ones. Events of gene gain by transformation were spread more evenly in the chromosome than MGEs encoding the ability to integrate autonomously. We estimated the contribution of natural transformation to gene gains by comparing recombination-driven gene acquisition rates between transformable and non-transformable strains. Natural transformation may have caused the acquisition of up to 6.4% (Ab) and 1.1% (Lp) of the novel genes. This low contribution of natural transformation to the acquisition of novel genes implies that most novel genes must have been acquired by other means. Interestingly, the ones potentially acquired by transformation include almost 15% of the recently acquired antibiotic resistance genes in A. baumannii . Hence, natural transformation may drive the acquisition of relatively few novel genes but these may have a high fitness impact.