The Hologenome Concept: Helpful or Hollow?

With the increasing appreciation for the crucial roles that microbial symbionts play in the development and fitness of plant and animal hosts, there has been a recent push to interpret evolution through the lens of the "hologenome"--the collective genomic content of a host and its microbio...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PLoS biology 2015-12, Vol.13 (12), p.e1002311-e1002311
Main Authors: Moran, Nancy A, Sloan, Daniel B
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Biological Evolution
Biological research
Biology, Experimental
Evolution
Genome
Genome, Microbial
Genomes
Genomics - methods
Genomics - trends
Humans
Hypotheses
Microbiota
Microorganisms
Models, Genetic
Organisms
Studies
Symbiosis
Terminology as Topic
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Summary:With the increasing appreciation for the crucial roles that microbial symbionts play in the development and fitness of plant and animal hosts, there has been a recent push to interpret evolution through the lens of the "hologenome"--the collective genomic content of a host and its microbiome. But how symbionts evolve and, particularly, whether they undergo natural selection to benefit hosts are complex issues that are associated with several misconceptions about evolutionary processes in host-associated microbial communities. Microorganisms can have intimate, ancient, and/or mutualistic associations with hosts without having undergone natural selection to benefit hosts. Likewise, observing host-specific microbial community composition or greater community similarity among more closely related hosts does not imply that symbionts have coevolved with hosts, let alone that they have evolved for the benefit of the host. Although selection at the level of the symbiotic community, or hologenome, occurs in some cases, it should not be accepted as the null hypothesis for explaining features of host-symbiont associations.
ISSN:1545-7885
1544-9173
1545-7885
DOI:10.1371/journal.pbio.1002311