HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Microbial Physiology and Metabolism
This article is part of the Research TopicDNA Replication Origins in Microbial Genomes, Volume IIIView all 5 articles
On the origins and variation of nucleotide skews of archaeal genomes
Provisionally accepted
- 1INSERM U1182 Laboratoire d'Optique et Biosciences (LOB), Palaiseau, France
- 2Ifremer Centre de Bretagne, Plouzané, France
- 3Sorbonne Universite, Paris, France
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We have used nucleotide skews as the proxy to understand the evolution of archaeal genomes. Our genome-wide studies using substantial datasets suggest that translational selection and the nature of the genetic code are universally conserved determinants of asymmetric guanine and cytosine distributions. We propose that in the case of the majority of bacterial chromosomes, mutational processes and/or DNA repair also result in the strand-specific nucleotide skews. This is in stark contrast to what we observe for archaeal chromosomes and plasmids, and reveals that archaea have a greatly reduced ability to create mutations and/or repair DNA damage in a strand-specific manner. We suggest that in the future, the described computational and statistical approach will help to understand the evolutionary dynamics of the archaeal chromosomes through the tree of life.
Keywords: Archaea, DNA replication and repair, non-canonical mismatch repair, nucleotide skews, Replication Origin
Received: 17 Oct 2025; Accepted: 31 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Paravel, Mottez, Puech, Flament, Becker and Myllykallio. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Hannu Myllykallio
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