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RANDOM GENE SHARING. “The radical construction of horizontal gene transfer envisions high rates of gene transfer even between divergent organisms. If partners for transfer were randomly chosen among different taxa, then no congruent topologies should emerge from different molecular phylogenies.” https://lnkd.in/djKBnru View in LinkedIn

CONSERVATIVE ASSUMPTION. “Genes transferred between more divergent species would be easily detected as conflicts with this consensus. (If reality is close to this model, dominated by vertical inheritance, then interdomain and interphylum horizontal gene transfer events promise to provide an excellent means of correlating evolutionary events in the different parts of the tree of life. For example, the origin of the cyanobacteria must predate the acquisition of chloroplast by early eukaryotes.).” https://lnkd.in/djKBnru View in LinkedIn

CONSERVATIVE VIEW: “most transfers take place between closely related organisms, and the transfer rate between divergent organisms is low. In this case, most molecular phylogenies will agree in their overall topology. Lineages might be “fuzzy lines”, but the larger evolutionary pattern would be reflected in the majority consensus.” https://lnkd.in/djKBnru View in LinkedIn

RADICAL NEW THINKING. “Gene-content phylogenies might be more properly viewed as taxonomies or phenetic classifications, while the equation of organismal phylogeny with the genealogy of only a small fraction of any organism's genes is, at least, a radical departure from traditional practice.” https://lnkd.in/djKBnru View in LinkedIn

LINEAGE QUESTIONS. “Horizontal gene transfer leads to genomes whose constituent genes have different evolutionary histories. Can one retain the concept of a single organismal lineage in the face of apparently frequent horizontal gene transfer, or is this concept fatally flawed?” https://lnkd.in/djKBnru View in LinkedIn

CURRENT ABUNDANCE. “Now, complete genome sequences offer an abundance of evidence for horizontal gene transfer and highlight its confounding effects in reconstructing the history of organismal evolution.” The difference a decade makes. https://lnkd.in/djKBnru View in LinkedIn

EARLY DEARTH. “A decade ago, evolutionary biologists were hesitant to invoke horizontal gene transfer as an explanation for these discrepancies. Then a few cases in which a simple bifurcating tree was clearly an insufficient evolutionary metaphor were recognized.” https://lnkd.in/djKBnru View in LinkedIn

PARTIALLY CONGRUENT. “The impact of such horizontal transfer is that molecular phylogenies calculated for different molecules from the same set of species, while often agreeing in broad outline, are only rarely completely congruent.” https://lnkd.in/djKBnru View in LinkedIn

EVOLUTION IN THIRTY YEARS. “Even just in the last 30 years we’ve seen the beak lengths getting longer in the U.K. population.” https://lnkd.in/ghWux7x View in LinkedIn

DIFFERENT TIMELINES. “Horizontal gene transfer confounds evolutionary relationships most strongly on broad timescales, whereas vertical inheritance—propagating mutational changes, gene rearrangements, and other intragenomic alterations—and gene exchange by homologous recombination dominate over the short term.” https://lnkd.in/djKBnru View in LinkedIn