An inventive mechanism: role of horizontal gene transfer (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, November 29, 2014, 11:57 (3645 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I've presented horizontal gene transfer in bacteria as a basic life evolution pattern obviously present at the single-cell level. Now more evidence is appearing for gene transfer working from single cell to eukaryotes:-http://newsbeat.washington.edu/story/animals-steal-defenses-bacteria- “When we started digging into genome databases, we were surprised to find that toxin genes we thought were present only in bacteria were also in several animals,” explained co-author Matt Daugherty, a postdoctoral fellow in the Malik lab. “We immediately started wondering why they were there.”-"Their analyses revealed that these genes had jumped from bacteria into animals. These genes had become permanently incorporated into the genomes of these animals through a process known as horizontal gene transfer. While such transfer events are common between microbes, very few genes have been reported to jump from bacteria to more complex organisms."-Thank you for this illustration of how, by extension, an autonomous inventive mechanism might work. I'm reminded of an article you recommended earlier on this thread by Stephen L. Talbott. He points out, for instance, that “organisms are masterful participants in, and revisers of, their own genomes”; that the organism “responds intelligently, and in accord with its own purposes, to whatever it encounters in its environment, including the environment of its own body”; that there is a “cooperative fusion of distinct microorganisms, a process requiring an almost unimaginable degree of intricate coordination among previously independent life processes”; and he quotes Barbara McClintock's 1983 Nobel address, in which she called for more research into “the extent of knowledge the cell has of itself, and how it utilizes this knowledge in a ‘thoughtful' manner when challenged”, to which he adds that “subsequent research has shown how far-seeing she was.”