From: patrick
Location:
Date: 08/30/2007
"Bacterial to Animal Gene Transfers Now Shown to be Widespread, with Implications for Evolution and Control of Diseases and Pests"
http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=2963
From: Greg Bear
Date: 08/30/2007
This is fascinating stuff, patrick. Wolbachia can dominate insect reproduction--but now, we're well into VITALS and DARWIN'S RADIO territory! Here's a quote from the Rochester piece: "This study establishes the widespread occurrence and high frequency of a process that we would have dismissed as science fiction until just a few years ago," says W. Ford Doolittle, Canada Research Chair in Comparative Microbial Genomics at Dalhousie University, who is not connected to the study. "This is stunning evidence for increased frequency of gene transfer."
Amen!
From: patrick
Location:
Date: 08/30/2007
No sh*&. Look out - you might soon be hailed as the new Nostradamus - with all that might entail.
From: Alex Tolley
Location: Los Gatos, CA
Date: 08/31/2007
Time to re-read "Acquiring Genomes: The Theory of the Origins of the Species". This is the hypothesis the book explores.
The more we find out about biological mechanisms, the more the central dogma proves inadequate. It really is looking like evolution by natural selection is the only robust theory in biology to stand the test of time.
Fascinating indeed.
From: Greg Bear
Date: 09/04/2007
I'll have to be lots more obscure to meet the standards of old Mr. N....
From: Greg Bear
Date: 09/04/2007
One of my favorites from a few years back--still very timely and important--is LATERAL DNA TRANSFER by Frederic Bushman. A technical text--but still accessible. Back when I was writing VITALS, I was searching for a bacterium that could write to host DNA... and couldn't find an example! Now we have one, and probably more will follow. (Mitochondria have swapped genes with nuclear DNA in cells, but it's been a long time since they were free-roving bacteria.)
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