One Species' Genome Discovered Inside Another's

slyyy writes "The Universtiy of Rochester has discovered the complete genome of a bacterial parasite inside the genome of the host species. This opens the possibility of exchanging DNA between unrelated species and changing our understanding of the evolutionary process. From the article: 'Before this study, geneticists knew of examples where genes from a parasite had crossed into the host, but such an event was considered a rare anomaly except in very simple organisms. Bacterial DNA is very conspicuous in its structure, so if scientists sequencing a nematode genome, for example, come across bacterial DNA, they would likely discard it, reasonably assuming that it was merely contamination--perhaps a bit of bacteria in the gut of the animal, or on its skin. But those genes may not be contamination. They may very well be in the host's own genome. This is exactly what happened with the original sequencing of the genome of the anannassae fruitfly--the huge Wolbachia insert was discarded from the final assembly, despite the fact that it is part of the fly's genome.'"

Comments

Re:maybe you don't know everying

[Hucko]

Can someone explain how the parent is a troll? Off topic maybe, funny at a long stretch (use drugs, that sometimes works. Redundant or recursive... I don't understand!

Re:Dawkins

[Empiric]

...that is, your purpose insofar as you and Dawkins know. ;)


Jesus said, "Blessed is the lion which becomes man when consumed by man; and cursed is the man whom the lion consumes, and the lion becomes man."

--Gospel of Thomas

Microsoft Motto

[xactuary]

First Do Evil.