Sumit Mukherjee, Rajesh Detroja, Gon Carmi, Milana Frenkel-Morgenstern: Incipient Sympatric Speciation and Evolution of Soil Bacteria Revealed by Metagenomic and Structured Non-Coding RNAs Analysis (Biology (Basel) .)

Soil bacteria respond rapidly to changes in new environmental conditions. For adaptation to the new environment, they could mutate their genome, which impacts the alternation of the functional and regulatory landscape. Sometimes, these genetic and ecological changes may drive the bacterial evolution and sympatric speciation. Although sympatric speciation has been controversial since Darwin suggested it in 1859, there are several strong theoretical or empirical evidences to support it. Sympatric speciation associated with soil bacteria remains largely unexplored. Here, we provide potential evidence of sympatric speciation of soil bacteria by comparison of metagenomics from two sharply contrasting abutting divergence rock and soil types