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BRILLIANT REVIEW. "Shuffling and disruption of operons and horizontal gene transfer are major contributions to the new, dynamic view of prokaryotic evolution. Under the 'selfish operon' hypothesis, operons are viewed as mobile genetic entities that are constantly disseminated via horizontal gene transfer, although their retention could be favored by the advantage of coregulation of functionally linked genes." https://lnkd.in/eRYS-TZ View in LinkedIn

"HORIZONTAL GENE TRANSFER (HGT) is thought to play an important role in the evolution of species and innovation of genomes. Here, we present a method of identifying HGT events within a given protein family and estimate the global extent of HGT in all curated protein domain families (≈8,000) listed in the Pfam database." https://lnkd.in/eawF3Dn View in LinkedIn

ACROSS TIME AND SPACE. "We observe [gene transfer] across the Tree of Life, meaning that bacteria separated by hundreds of millions or billions of years of evolution are engaged in HGT...Furthermore, distantly related bacteria that inhabited the same environment had higher levels of gene exchange compared with closely related bacteria that inhabited different environments." https://lnkd.in/e8222ss View in LinkedIn

ENORMOUS EXTENT. "One of the most surprising findings of whole-genome sequencing is the enormous extent of LGT, indicating that gene swapping among organisms is not a laboratory oddity but a constitutive factor in diversification. On average, 2.6 prophages have been detected per free-living bacterial species, and a number of bacterial genomes contain between 3% and 10% prophage DNA." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1462-2920.2003.00539.x/full View in LinkedIn

GENETIC SWAP-MEET. "When Chris Smillie and Mark Smith from MIT looked at the genomes of over 2,200 species of bacteria, they found 10,000 genes that had been recently swapped. These genes were more than 99 percent identical, even though they came from bacteria that were distantly related." https://lnkd.in/etuiYJg View in LinkedIn

FUNCTIONAL VIRAL GENES. "Our study provided comprehensive and convincing evidence that the genes of small circular ssDNA viruses have been transferred into a broad range of eukaryotic genomes, and some of the transferred genes were also conserved and functional in host genomes. This discovery extends the host range of circular ssDNA viruses and offers insight into the origin and evolution of relevant viruses." http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/11/276/ View in LinkedIn

"HORIZONTAL GENE TRANSFER has happened between all kinds of living things throughout the history of life on the planet – not just between species, but also between different kingdoms of life. Bacterial genes end up in plants; fungal genes wind up in animals; snake and frog genes find their way into cows and bats. It seems that the genome of just about every modern species is something of a mosaic constructed with genes borrowed from many different forms of life." https://aeon.co/essays/genes-that-jump-species-does-this-shake-the-tree-of-life View in LinkedIn

ANOTHER METHOD. "In addition to vertical transmission, organisms can also acquire genes from other distantly related species or from their extra-chromosomal elements (plasmids and viruses) via horizontal gene transfer (HGT). It has been suggested that phages represent substantial forces in prokaryotic evolution." https://lnkd.in/ehxdJfF View in LinkedIn

VERY RECENT CHANGE. "When the human genome was first published, the suggestion that it contained bacterial genes was controversial." (2001). A reminder that scientific hypotheses can evolve rapidly. New mindset today. https://lnkd.in/eaMwmW6 View in LinkedIn

GENE TRANSFER AGENTS. "We documented GTA-mediated gene transfer frequencies a thousand to a hundred million times higher than prior estimates of HGT in the oceans, with as high as 47% of the culturable natural microbial community confirmed as gene recipients. These findings suggest a plausible mechanism by which marine bacteria acquire novel traits, thus ensuring resilience in the face of environmental change." https://lnkd.in/ebVH843 View in LinkedIn