In high biomass samples, sequencing methods are comparable – however, as biomass decreases, minor taxa are rapidly lost with 16S as the limited amplicon library becomes biased towards the most abundant taxon. 2/4

Excellent and thought provoking!

Is the episomal exclusion strategy a form of anti-phage defense?
I find it amusing to read that resistance-associated mutations were not attributed to this phenomenon. What could the mechanism possibly be

Impressive! Could this be a possible evolutionary trajectory behind staphylococcal pathogenicity islands?

Interesting! Considering minimal costs of these integrons, I wonder if these brics are then vertically transmitted to daughter cells even under the absence of selective pressures