Background: plasmids gain and lose genes, and undergo inversions and even fusions. So, are there "natural" groups of plasmids (species equiv) which are "evolving units", or is it gene soup? 2/n

This question has been asked before, and recent efforts involve making a network,vwith nodes=plasmids, edges=mash distance, and then finding network communities. (I'm skipping details about extra constraints) (www.nature.com/articles/s41...www.nature.com/articles/s41...) 3/n

Large-scale network analysis captures biological features of bacterial plasmids - Nature Communications

Plasmids can mediate the exchange of genetic material between bacterial cells. Here, Acman et al. use network analyses to study the population structure and dynamics of over 10,000 plasmids, assigning...