Bacteriophage genomes show pervasive mosaicism, indicating that horizontal gene exchange plays a crucial role in their evolution. Phage genomes represent unique combinations of modules, each of them with a different phylogenetic history. Thus, a web-like, rather than a hierarchical scheme is needed for an appropriate representation of phage evolutionary relationships. Part of the virology community has long recognized this fact and calls for changing the traditional taxonomy that classifies tailed phages according to the type of genetic materials and phage tail and head/capsid morphologies. Moreover, based on morphological features, the current system depends on inspection of phage virions under the electron microscope and cannot directly classify prophages. With the genomic era, many phages have been sequenced that are not classified, calling for development of an automatic classification procedure that can cope with the sequencing pace. The ACLAME database provides a classification of phage proteins into families and assigns the families with at least 3 members to one or several functions. In the first contribution of this work, the relative contribution of those different protein families to the similarities between the phages is assessed using pair-wise similarity matrices. The modular character of phage genomes is readily visualized using heatmaps, which differ depending on the function of the proteins used to measure the similarity. Next, I propose a framework that allows for a reticulate classification of phages based on gene content (with statistical assessment of the significance of number of shared genes). Starting from gene/protein families, we built a weighted graph, where nodes represent phages and edges represent phage-phage similarities in terms of shared families. The topology of the network shows that most dsDNA phages form an interconnected group, confirming that dsDNA phages share a common gene pool, as proposed earlier. Differences are observed between temperate and virulent phages in the values of several centrality measures, which may correlate with different constraints to rampant recombination dictated by the phage lifestyle, and thus with a distinct evolutionary role in the phage population. To this graph I applied a two-step clustering method to generate a fuzzy classification of phages. Using this methodology, each phage is associated with a membership vector, which quantitatively characterizes the membership of the phage to the clusters. Alternatively, genes were clustered based on their ‘phylogenetic profiles’ to define ‘evolutionary cohesive modules’. Phages can then be described as composite of a set of modules from the collection of modules of the whole phage population. The relationships between phages define a network based on module sharing. Unlike the first network built from statistical significant number of shared genes, this second network allows for a direct exploration of the nature of the functions shared between the connected phages. This functionality of the module-based network runs at the expense of missing links due to genes that are not part of modules, but which are encoded in the first network. These approaches can easily focus on pre-defined modules for tracing one or several traits across the population. They provide an automatic and dynamic way to study relationships within the phage population. Moreover, they can be extended to the representation of populations of other mobile genetic elements or even to the entire mobilome. Finally, to enrich the phage sequence space, which in turn allows for a better assessment of phage diversity and evolution, I devise a prophage prediction tool. With this methodology, approximately 800 prophages are predicted in 266 among 800 replicons screened. The comparison of a subset of these predictions with a manually annotated set shows a sensitivity of 79% and a positive predictive value of 91%, this later value suggesting that the procedure makes few false predictions. The preliminary analysis of the predicted prophages indicates that many may constitute novel phage types. This work allows tracing guidelines for the classification and analysis of other mobile genetic elements. One can foresee that a pool of putative mobile genetic elements sequences can be extracted from the prokaryotic genomes and be further broken down in groups of related elements and evolutionary conserved modules. This would allow widening the picture of the evolutionary and functional relationships between these elements.

Les métallo-b-lactamases (MBL) acquises constituent une menace sanitaire par risqué d’impasse thérapeutique dans les infections causées par les bacilles à Gram négatif, en particulier lorsque ces bactéries produisent une b-lactamase à spectre étendu (BLSE). La MBL VIM-1 est une carbapénémase qui hydrolyse toutes les β-lactamines, à l’exception des monobactames. Cette enzyme a émergé en Grèce où elle est désormais endémique chez les entérobactéries. Six souches de bacilles à Gram négatif produisant une carbapénémase ont été isolées chez un même patient qui avait été rapatrié de Grèce. Trois de ces souches, Providencia stuartii (Ps), Proteus mirabilis (Pm) et Escherichia coli (Ec), produisaient la MBL VIM-1 et la BLSE SHV-5. Dans chacune de ces trois souches, les gènes blaVIM-1 et blaSHV-5 étaient portés par un plasmide transférable par conjugaison in vitro. Les plasmides extraits des transconjugants présentaient le même profil de restriction et portaient un intégron de classe 1 identique dans lequel le gène blaVIM-1 était intégré. Nous avons émis l’hypothèse qu’un plasmide codant pour VIM-1 et SHV-5 avait été transféré de la souche Ps vers les souches Pm et Ec dans le tube digestif du patient et avons reproduit ce transfert in vivo dans un modèle de souris gnotoxéniques. Au cours de cette expérience, le plasmide codant pour VIM-1 et SHV-5 a été transféré avec succès de la souche Ps vers la souche réceptrice E. coli J53, en dehors de toute pression de sélection par les antibiotiques. Nous avons ensuite analysé la séquence complète du plasmide pTC2 extrait d’un transconjugant obtenu par conjugaion in vivo. Ce plasmide de type co-intégrat (IncA/C, IncR) de 180kb possédait un squelette de type IncA/C et une région de multirésistance (MDR1) au sein de laquelle était intégré un fragment de type IncR de 13kb. L’analyse de cette séquence nous a permis d’identifier un système de transfert de type IncA/C complet et intact et différents types de systèmes de maintien, à la fois au sein du squelette IncA/C et au sein du fragment IncR. La région mosaïque MDR1 contenait neuf séquences d’insertion (sept copies de l’IS26, une IS1 et une IS6100), 10 gènes de résistance aux antibiotiques et l’opéron mer de résistance au mercure qui étaient intégrés dans des transposons unitaires, des transposons composites ou des intégrons. Le plasmide pTC2 cumule des propriétés qui font de lui un véhicule performant de la résistance aux antibiotiques : un large spectre d’hôte, de bonnes capacités de transfert, de bonnes capacités de maintien dans une population bactérienne, une grande plasticité de sa région MDR1 et une grande variété de gènes de résistance. / Acquired metallo-b-lactamases (MBLs) represent a threat for the treatment of infections caused by Gram-negative bacteria, particularly by enterobacteria that already produce extended-spectrum b-lactamases (ESBL). VIM-1 MBL, which is a carbapenemase that can hydrolyze all classes of β-lactam antibiotics except monobactams, has emerged in Greece and is now commonly found in Enterobacteriaeae. Six carbapenemase-producing strains of Gram-negative bacilli were isolated from a unique patient transferred from Greece to a French hospital. Three of these strains, Providencia stuartii (Ps), Proteus mirabilis (Pm) and Escherichia coli (Ec) strains, were shown to produce the MBL VIM-1 and the ESBL SHV-5. In each of these three strains, the blaVIM-1 gene was carried by a plasmid transferable by in vitro conjugation. The plasmids extracted from the transconjugants displayed a unique restriction profile and harboured identical VIM-1-containing class 1 integrons. Considering the hypothesis that this VIM-1 plasmid had probably been transferred from the Ps strain to the Ec and Pm strains, we performed in vivo conjugation assays in the digestive tract of gnotobiotic mice colonized with E. coli J53, to demonstrate that the VIM-1 plasmid harboured by strain Ps was transferable in vivo, in absence of antibiotic pressure. We determined the complete nucleotide sequence of the VIM-1-encoding plasmid pTC2, which was isolated in a Greek Providencia stuartii multiresistant strain. This 180-kb plasmid was found to be a multireplicon plasmid (IncA/C, IncR), with a large IncA/C backbone and a mosaic multidrug resistance (MDR1) region, in which was inserted a 13-kb IncR fragment. A CD-search-based annotation of the plasmid allowed the identification of a complete IncA/C-type transfer system and of several putative maintenance modules, either on the IncA/C backbone, and on the IncR fragment. The complex MDR1 region contained nine insertion sequences (seven copies of the IS26, one IS1 and one IS6100), 10 resistance genes and a mercury resistance operon integrated either into unit transposons, composite transposons or integrons. The broad-host range, the transfer capacities, the stability, the high plasticity of the MDR1 region combined to the variety of resistance genes make pTC2 a superspreader of resistance determinants.

Transposons are selfish, mobile genetic elements, moving within the genome. The transposase genemakes this possible, as it codes for the enzyme that catalyzes the movement. In the case of bacteria,they can also move horizontally between individual bacteria, and sometimes even between species.By default, they are a burden for the host organism, coding for a protein that the host does not need.They also pose the risk of disabling the host’s crucial genes by inserting themselves into it.Transposons are under some pressure to benefit the host, to help propagate themselves moreeffectively. And some transposons have indeed evolved to benefit the host. Lactobacillus kunkeei is a bacterial species known to reside in honeybee guts. It is known for itsrole in honey preservation and wine spoilage. The genome of L. kunkeei is reduced because it is asymbiont, however it contains an unusually high amount of transposons in its genome. In this study, the transposase genes (transposon enzymes) found in L. kunkeei are studied andcategorized. The L. kunkeei have been extracted from honeybees (Apis mellifera). The honeybeesthemselves have been collected from the islands Åland and Gotland. This study focuses on the transposase genes that come in pairs, one after another in the genome.Transposase genes were identified using annotation software and orthology-based methods. Theannotation software provides numbering for the genes, which allows finding paired genes. Thepaired genes were categorized based on alignments and phylogenetic software. Pseudogenizedtransposons were identified based on length and/or clustering into triplets. A total of 766 paired transposase genes were found. The transposase genes were found to take up1.9% of the genome, on average. A low level of diversity has been found when performingalignments and generating phylogenetic trees. The positions of the transposase genes are generallyconserved within phylogenetic groups. Pseudogenization has been detected for some transposasegenes – 4.5 per genome, on average. All of the studied transposons belong to the IS3 family, whichis a family of Class I transposons.

Bacteriophage genomes show pervasive mosaicism, indicating that horizontal gene exchange plays a crucial role in their evolution. Phage genomes represent unique combinations of modules, each of them with a different phylogenetic history. Thus, a web-like, rather than a hierarchical scheme is needed for an appropriate representation of phage evolutionary relationships. Part of the virology community has long recognized this fact and calls for changing the traditional taxonomy that classifies tailed phages according to the type of genetic materials and phage tail and head/capsid morphologies. Moreover, based on morphological features, the current system depends on inspection of phage virions under the electron microscope and cannot directly classify prophages. With the genomic era, many phages have been sequenced that are not classified, calling for development of an automatic classification procedure that can cope with the sequencing pace. The ACLAME database provides a classification of phage proteins into families and assigns the families with at least 3 members to one or several functions.<p>In the first contribution of this work, the relative contribution of those different protein families to the similarities between the phages is assessed using pair-wise similarity matrices. The modular character of phage genomes is readily visualized using heatmaps, which differ depending on the function of the proteins used to measure the similarity. <p>Next, I propose a framework that allows for a reticulate classification of phages based on gene content (with statistical assessment of the significance of number of shared genes). Starting from gene/protein families, we built a weighted graph, where nodes represent phages and edges represent phage-phage similarities in terms of shared families. The topology of the network shows that most dsDNA phages form an interconnected group, confirming that dsDNA phages share a common gene pool, as proposed earlier. Differences are observed between temperate and virulent phages in the values of several centrality measures, which may correlate with different constraints to rampant recombination dictated by the phage lifestyle, and thus with a distinct evolutionary role in the phage population. <p>To this graph I applied a two-step clustering method to generate a fuzzy classification of phages. Using this methodology, each phage is associated with a membership vector, which quantitatively characterizes the membership of the phage to the clusters. Alternatively, genes were clustered based on their ‘phylogenetic profiles’ to define ‘evolutionary cohesive modules’. Phages can then be described as composite of a set of modules from the collection of modules of the whole phage population. The relationships between phages define a network based on module sharing. Unlike the first network built from statistical significant number of shared genes, this second network allows for a direct exploration of the nature of the functions shared between the connected phages. This functionality of the module-based network runs at the expense of missing links due to genes that are not part of modules, but which are encoded in the first network. <p>These approaches can easily focus on pre-defined modules for tracing one or several traits across the population. They provide an automatic and dynamic way to study relationships within the phage population. Moreover, they can be extended to the representation of populations of other mobile genetic elements or even to the entire mobilome.<p>Finally, to enrich the phage sequence space, which in turn allows for a better assessment of phage diversity and evolution, I devise a prophage prediction tool. With this methodology, approximately 800 prophages are predicted in 266 among 800 replicons screened. The comparison of a subset of these predictions with a manually annotated set shows a sensitivity of 79% and a positive predictive value of 91%, this later value suggesting that the procedure makes few false predictions. The preliminary analysis of the predicted prophages indicates that many may constitute novel phage types.<p>This work allows tracing guidelines for the classification and analysis of other mobile genetic elements. One can foresee that a pool of putative mobile genetic elements sequences can be extracted from the prokaryotic genomes and be further broken down in groups of related elements and evolutionary conserved modules. This would allow widening the picture of the evolutionary and functional relationships between these elements.<p> / Doctorat en Sciences / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Les réarrangements permettent une évolution rapide du génome par l’acquisition de séquences codantes exogènes, la perte de fonctions non-essentielles ou la création de nouvelles organisations génomiques. Différents mécanismes de réarrangements impliquant des éléments génétiques mobiles (EGM) ont été identifiés chez les archées, les bactéries et les eucaryotes. En revanche, on ignore l’origine des nombreuses inversions génomiques détectées pour les espèces du genre archéen Thermococcus. Mes travaux de thèse visent à améliorer la compréhension de l’évolution génomique chez les Thermococcales à travers l’étude de deux familles d’EGM : les familles de plasmides pTN3 et pT26-2. Plus précisément, je me suis intéressée aux recombinases à tyrosine (ou intégrases) que ces plasmides encodent et qui permettent leur intégration dans le chromosome de l’hôte. J’ai montré que l’intégrase plasmidique Intᵖᵀᴺ³ est responsable d’inversions dans le chromosome de son hôte Thermococcus nautili grâce à une activité catalytique inédite de recombinaison homologue. J’ai par la suite caractérisé deux autres intégrases de Thermococcales reliés phylogénétiquement à Intᵖᵀᴺ³ dont seulement une présente une activité de recombinaison homologue. La comparaison de leurs séquences primaires et la résolution de la structure de Intᵖᵀᴺ³ vont maintenant éclairer les déterminants génétiques responsables de la spécificité de site et de l’activité de recombinaison homologue. Les trois intégrases appartiennent à une classe de recombinases spécifique des archées qui catalyse une intégration suicidaire. Lors de l’intégration, le gène de l’intégrase est fragmenté et probablement désactivé. L’EGM intégré se retrouve piégé dans le chromosome. Les avantages évolutifs d’une telle activité suicidaire restent pour l’instant mystérieux. J’ai identifié 62 intégrases hyperthermophiles suicidaires et reconstruit leur histoire évolutive. Ces intégrases sont très prévalentes et recrutées par différents EGM. De plus, j’ai montré que l’une de ces intégrases présente in vitro une activité de recombinaison site-spécifique à des températures proches de l’ébullition de l’eau, représentant un avantage dans les environnements hyperthermophiles. / Genomes rapidly evolve through rearrangements that can generate new genome organizations or lead to the acquisition of foreign coding sequences or the loss of non-essential functions. Several mechanisms of rearrangement were uncovered for Archaea, Bacteria and Eukaryotes that involve mobile genetic elements (MGE). Species from the archaeal genera Thermococcus present numerous genomic inversions but none of the previously known inversion drivers. To better understand the genomic evolution of Thermococcales, I investigated two of their MGE families: the pTN3 and pT26-2 plasmid families. Specifically, I focused on the tyrosine recombinases (or integrase) that these plasmids encode and that catalyze their site-specific integration in the host chromosome. I demonstrated that the plasmidic integrase Intᵖᵀᴺ³ is responsible for chromosomal inversions in the host Thermococcus nautili through an unprecedented homologous recombination catalytic activity. I also characterized two other related Thermococcus integrases and only one catalyzes homologous recombination. The structure resolution of Intᵖᵀᴺ³ and primary sequence comparisons will now provide clues about the genetic determinants of site specificity and of the homologous recombination activity. The three integrases all belong to an archaeal-specific class of integrases that catalyzes a suicidal integration. The integrase gene is partitioned and presumably inactivated upon integration. The integrated MGE is then trapped into the chromosome. The evolutionary benefits of this suicide activity are puzzling. I identified 62 related suicidal hyperthermophilic integrases and reconstructed their evolutionary history. They are highly prevalent and recruited by diverse MGE. I also showed that one of these integrases can catalyze in vitro site-specific recombination at near boiling water temperature, representing an advantage in hyperthermophilic environments.