Evolutionary Relationships of Pathogenic Clones of Vibrio cholerae
O. Colin Stine
from: Vibrio cholerae: Genomics and Molecular Biology (Edited by: Shah M. Faruque and G. Balakrish Nair). Caister Academic Press, U.K. (2008)
Abstract
Evolution refers to the differentiation of an ancestral genome into recognizably distinct genomes. Understanding the evolutionary history of an organism can provide insight into how it can be expected to evolve in the future and provide predictions that serve as the basis of where to best focus effort to prevent the emergence of new pathogenic variants. In order to accurately understand the evolutionary history, the methods used for interpreting the genetic variation need to reflect the mechanisms of genetic change. The critical mechanism for deciding how to interpret the genetic relatedness is the amount of recombination. If recombination is rare, then the traditional phylogenetic analysis based on bifurcating trees works well. If recombination is common, then a method that incorporates recombination must be used. Evolutionary relationships among pathogenic clones based on these assessments have been presented and discussed read more ...
