Bacteria adapt rapidly to environmental stimuli, such as exposure to xenobiotics. Mobile
genetic elements (MGEs) play a major role in such bacterial adaptation, via the dispersal of …

The recent findings of various mobile catabolic genes have provided some insight into the
evolution of microbial degradation systems for xenobiotic compounds. The catabolic genes …

Retrospective studies clearly indicate that mobile genetic elements (MGEs) play a major role
in the in situ spread and even de novo construction of catabolic pathways in bacteria …

The introduction of foreign organic hydrocarbons into the environment in recent years, as in
the widespread use of antibiotics, has resulted in the evolution of novel adaptive …

The characterization of bacteria that degrade organic xenobiotics has revealed that they can
adapt to these compounds by expressing 'novel'catabolic pathways. At least some of them …

The horizontal transfer of genes encoded on mobile genetic elements (MGEs) such as
plasmids and phage and their associated hitchhiking elements (transposons, integrons …

Nucleotide sequence analysis, and more recently whole genome analysis, shows that
bacterial evolution has often proceeded by horizontal gene flow between different species …

Transposition is a major mechanism of horizontal gene mobility in prokaryotes. However,
exploration of the genes mobilized by transposons (cargo) is hampered by the difficulty in …

There is huge potential for genetic exchange to occur within the dense, diverse anaerobic
microbial population inhabiting the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) of humans and animals …

Genes that encode the degradation of both naturally occurring and xenobiotic organic
compounds are often located on plasmids, transposons or other mobile and/or integrative …