Towards a taxonomy of conjugative plasmids

Conjugative plasmids are the keystone of horizontal gene transfer. Metagenomic research and clinical understanding of plasmid transmission beg for a taxonomical approach to conjugative plasmid classification. Up to now, a meaningful classification was difficult to achieve for lack of appropriate analytical tools. The advent of the genomic era revolutionized the landscape, offering a plethora of plasmid sequences as well as bioinformatic analytical tools. Given the need and the opportunity, in view of the available evidence, a taxonomy of conjugative plasmids is proposed in the hope that it will leverage plasmid studies.
The work performed by the FdlC group was supported by grants BFU2014-55534-C2-1-P and BFU2014-62190-EXP from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and 612146/FP7-ICT-2013-10 from the European Seventh Framework Programme.