The Dynamic Bacterial Genome

Part I. Basic Mechanisms of Genome Rearrangement in Bacteria: 1. Mechanisms of homologous recombination in bacteria Marie-Agnès Petit; 2. Introduction to site-specific recombination Makkuni Jayaram and Ian Grainge; 3. Site-specific recombination by the serine recombinases Sally J. Rowland and W. Marshall Stark; 4. Mobile introns and retroelements in bacteria Steve Zimmerly; Part II. Horizontal Gene Transfer and Genome Plasticity: 5. The F-Plasmid, a paradigm for bacterial conjugation Michael J. Gubbins, William R. Will and Laura S. Frost; 6. Molecular aspects of movement of conjugative transposons Adam P. Roberts and Peter Mullany; 7. Competence for genetic transformation Irena Draskovic and David Dubnau; Part III. Biological Consequences of the Mobile Genome: 8. Phase variation and antigenic variation Richard Villemur and Eric Déziel; 9. Pathogenicity islands Bianca Hochhut and Jörg Hacker; 10. Biological consequences for bacteria of homologous recombination Diarmaid Hughes and Tobias Norström; 11. Horizontal gene transfer and bacterial genomic legacies James R. Brown.