The bacterial pangenome was introduced in 2005 and, in recent years, has been the subject
of many studies. Thanks to progress in next-generation sequencing methods, the …

Niches are spaces for the biological units of selection, from cells to complex communities. In
a broad sense,“species” are biological units of individuation. Niches do not exist without …

Generalists can survive in many environments, whereas specialists are restricted to a single
environment. Although a classical concept in ecology, niche breadth has remained …

Soft rot Enterobacteriaceae (SRE) are bacterial plant pathogens that cause blackleg, wilt
and soft rot diseases on a broad range of important crop and ornamental plants worldwide …

Genome-wide association studies have the potential to identify causal genetic factors
underlying important phenotypes but have rarely been performed in bacteria. We present an …

Background The gene content of a species largely governs its ecological interactions and
adaptive potential. A species is therefore defined by both core genes shared between all …

Background Escherichia coli exists in commensal and pathogenic forms. By measuring the
variation of individual genes across more than a hundred sequenced genomes, gene …

Background A pan-genome is defined as the set of all unique gene families found in one or
more strains of a prokaryotic species. Due to the extensive within-species diversity in the …

The global significance of Campylobacter jejuni and Campylobacter coli as gastrointestinal
human pathogens has motivated numerous studies to characterize their population biology …

The concept of the species 'pan-genome', the union of 'core'conserved genes and all
'accessory'non-conserved genes across all strains of a species, was first proposed in …