Mobile Genetic Elements: Structure, Classification, and Mechanisms

Résumé

This academic volume, Mobile Genetic Elements: Structure, Classification, and Mechanisms, provides a structured overview of the bacterial mobilome and its role in genome plasticity, adaptation, and antimicrobial resistance. It opens by defining mobile genetic elements and distinguishing intracellular mobility from intercellular transfer through transformation, transduction, conjugation, and vesicle-mediated exchange. The book then progresses through the major families of elements: bacteriophages, plasmids, chromosomally integrated elements, transposons, insertion sequences, and integrons. Each chapter combines structural description with mechanistic explanation, classification systems, examples from Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, and evolutionary or clinical implications. Bacteriophages are presented as viruses, genetic couriers, prophage systems, and tools for therapy. Plasmids are examined as autonomous modular replicons involved in conjugation, maintenance, resistance, virulence, and ecological adaptation. Integrated conjugative and mobilizable elements are analyzed as chromosome-anchored vectors of gene flow. Transposons and insertion sequences are treated as engines of genome rearrangement and resistance-gene mobilization, while integrons are described as gene-capture platforms central to multidrug resistance and environmental surveillance