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GUT HGT. "In Japan, some people’s gut bacteria have stolen seaweed-digesting genes from ocean bacteria lingering on raw seaweed salads." This is an important observation. https://aeon.co/essays/genes-that-jump-species-does-this-shake-the-tree-of-life View in LinkedIn

BROAD FOOTPRINT. "The transposon BovB – first found in cows (hence the bovine epithet) – is also present in anoles, opossums, platypuses, wallabies, horses, sea urchins, silkworms and zebrafish, to name a few." https://aeon.co/essays/genes-that-jump-species-does-this-shake-the-tree-of-life View in LinkedIn

BUSY GENE. "On its epic journey through the tree of life, BovB has jumped between species at least nine times, and seems to have moved from reptiles to mammals." https://aeon.co/essays/genes-that-jump-species-does-this-shake-the-tree-of-life View in LinkedIn

WE ARE GENETIC MOSAICS. "Around half of the human genome is made up of bits of DNA that have copied themselves and jumped around, creating vast tracts of repetitive sequences. The same is true for the cow genome, where one particular piece of DNA, known as BovB, has run amok. It’s there in its thousands. Around a quarter of a cow’s DNA is made of BovB sequences or their descendants." This cow DNA came from snakes." https://lnkd.in/ekpvtvZ View in LinkedIn

JUMPING GENES. "Researchers at The University of Texas at Arlington have found the first solid evidence of horizontal DNA transfer, the movement of genetic material among non-mating species, between parasitic invertebrates and some of their vertebrate hosts." https://lnkd.in/eWWzdkB View in LinkedIn

CELL FRAGMENT SURPRISE. "DNA fragmentation is a biochemical hallmark of apoptosis. It was shown that horizontal DNA transfer between mammalian cells can occur through the uptake of apoptotic bodies, where genes from the apoptotic cells were transferred to neighbouring cells phagocytosing the apoptotic bodies." https://lnkd.in/evv6az7 View in LinkedIn

NO SPECIES BARRIER. "Because of their prevalence, phages are likely to play an important role in gene transfer in the environment. Although it used to be thought that phages only rarely crossed species boundaries, broad-host-range (BHR) generalized transducing phages that can transfer genes between species and genera have recently been discovered at high frequency in different natural environments." https://lnkd.in/eXE-r93 View in LinkedIn

OLD DEBATE. "Horizontal gene transfer involves the exchange of genetic material between different organisms in a single generation. Evidently, once transferred, natural selection can determine which genes spread throughout populations. But the acquisition of novel genes in a single generation, in my point of view, is far from the gradualist or slow-change principle proposed by the neo-Darwinians, and it has a certain Lamarckian taste." https://lnkd.in/eVQ_4UY View in LinkedIn

HIGHLY ADAPTIVE. "HGT can promote adaptation to new environments by allowing molecular innovations to be traded within ecological niches. For example, HGT has enhanced bacterial adaptation to life in environments containing heavy metals and toxic organic compounds." https://lnkd.in/ej6mCcR View in LinkedIn

ILLUSIVE AND SLIPPERY. "Mobile elements as varied as conjugative transposons, transposable prophages, integrative plasmids and mobile integrons appear on first inspection to be extremely difficult to detect and categorize systematically." https://lnkd.in/ej6mCcR View in LinkedIn