Year: 2022

PROTECTION. "The model shows that, thanks to the stochastic nature of the mutation process, protection from the ratchet is achievable despite the fact that environmental DNA that comes from dead microbes on average has a higher mutational load than the DNA of living recipient cells." https://lnkd.in/dSemZpD View in LinkedIn

EQUIVALENT OF SEX. "Thus, in prokaryotes, HGT plays the same role of preventing mutational meltdown that in eukaryotes is played by meiotic sex." (HGT = horizontal gene transfer). https://lnkd.in/dSemZpD View in LinkedIn

METABOLIC INNOVATION. "Escape from Muller’s ratchet can be considered the most fundamental benefit of HGT in microbial evolution but it certainly is not the only one. Acquisition of new genes and whole operons appears to be the principal route of metabolic network expansion in microbes." (HGT = horizontal gene transfer). https://lnkd.in/dSemZpD View in LinkedIn

ENZYMATIC FITNESS. "As the network grows, gain of a single enzyme is increasingly likely to provide access to a new nutrient leading to increased fitness." https://lnkd.in/dSemZpD View in LinkedIn

HGT AS EVOLVABLE. "Given the indispensability of HGT for the survival of microbial populations, a plausible hypothesis seems to be that HGT is evolvable, i.e. is an adaptive, selectable trait." (HGT = horizontal gene transfer). https://lnkd.in/dSemZpD View in LinkedIn

SEA OF DNA. "HGT might be considered a by-product of the presence of substantial amounts of DNA in the environment combined with genetic processes such as transformation and bacteriophage infection that leads to gene transduction." (HGT = horizontal gene transfer). https://lnkd.in/dSemZpD View in LinkedIn

DNA PUMPS. "Diverse bacteria and archaea are competent for natural transformation that is mediated by dedicated DNA intake pumps. These pumps can be legitimately considered devices for utilization of environmental DNA as a source of nucleotides (simply put, food), with HGT being a fringe benefit." (HGT = horizontal gene transfer). https://lnkd.in/dSemZpD View in LinkedIn

GENE INTAKE. "However, the demonstration that at least in some bacteria the ingested DNA is protected against degradation, thus preventing its use as a nucleotide source and conversely facilitating HGT, implies that, at least in part, natural competence evolved as a gene transfer mechanism." (HGT = horizontal gene transfer). https://lnkd.in/dSemZpD View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this first of two weekends contemplating horizontal gene transfer. The world of microbes is so different from the eukaryotic world, and this is strongly highlighted by the free flow of genes between these creatures, and as we will see next weekend, between microbes and eukaryotes. Horizontal gene transfer in microbes finds its equivalent in eukaryotic sex, serving to fresh the genome from bad mutations and to be a fountain of genetic innovation. View in LinkedIn

PATTERNED MASSIVE DATASETS. "The research is being heralded as a potential breakthrough for science in the Petabyte Age, where computers try to find regularities in massive datasets that are too big and complex for the human mind and its standard computational tools." (Hod Lipson, Cornell University). https://lnkd.in/dyU_N5f View in LinkedIn