horizontal transfer


The selfish gene drives an operon

This is another archival repost first written for the old blog in 2007. On Monday I mentioned John Maynard Smith’s videos at People’s Archive. They really are marvelous, and you should watch them all. One of the topics he discusses is horizontal gene transfer in bacteria, a subject I discussed […]


Light years upstream, dipping in the River out of Eden

This is another archival repost, originally written for the old blog in May 2008. Darwin’s 1837 phylogeny, with root and branches. I’ve talked about Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT) on the blog a few times before, particularly in the context of bacteria acquiring genes for things like antibiotic resistance, and in […]


Horizontal transfer and the modern species

This is another archival repost originally written for the old blog in april 2007. Bacteria tend to get ignored to some extent by writers of popular science and science blogs, except in the context of disease and medicine. There is a general assumption that, as single celled organisms, they must […]