Accepted_test

Tandem genome amplification is quite common in bacteria growing under stress conditions while spontaneous genome amplification events are rare, not stable and generally poorly described. In most cases, tandem amplification is a result of RecA-dependent recombination which requires short DNA repeats flanking the amplified region. Plague pathogen Yersinia pestis is a unique organism that contains an enormous number of short repeat sequences in its genome and as a result is prone to spontaneous genome rearrangements including large tandem duplication events. Now, rearrangement dynamics in Y. pestis is considered as one of its main adaptation mechanisms, and we suppose that genome amplification events also might play a role in it by affecting gene expression. In this study, we aimed to systematically consider the frequency of spontaneous genome amplification events in Y. pestis, identify their main drivers and analyze the gene content of the amplified regions.