Study on the mutational robustness of the ribosome through interspecies exchange of rRNA genes

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Because of structural and mechanistic complexity of the ribosome, it is generally believed that rRNAs coevolve with their partner ribosomal proteins. Thus, horizontal transfer should seldom occur for 16S (or 23S) rRNA genes to maintain the structural integrity of the ribosome. Despite this general thought, however, in this study, we have shown that growth of Escherichia coli prrn-Delta7, a null mutant of rrn operons, was successfully complemented with exogenous 16S (or 23S) rRNA genes from diverse lineages of bacteria that showed only ~80% identities with those of E. coli. Thus ribosome is unexpectedly robust enough to accommodate large mutations or horizontal gene transfer.