Unveiling the Hidden Potential: The Significance of Unknown Genes from Uncultivated Taxa
Originally Published 2 years ago — by Nature.com
Researchers have analyzed 149,842 environmental genomes and compiled a catalog of 404,085 novel gene families exclusive to uncultivated prokaryotic taxa. These functionally and evolutionarily significant genes span multiple species and exhibit strong signals of purifying selection. The catalog includes novel families that can distinguish entire uncultivated phyla, classes, and orders, potentially representing synapomorphies that facilitated their evolutionary divergence. The researchers predicted functional associations for a significant portion of these gene families and experimentally validated a new gene family involved in cell motility and a novel set of antimicrobial peptides. The relative abundance profiles of these novel gene families can also discriminate between environments and clinical conditions, leading to the discovery of potential new biomarkers associated with colorectal cancer. This study expands our knowledge of the genetic repertory of uncultivated organisms and enhances future metagenomics studies.