articleScienceAug 30, 2007Closed access

Widespread Lateral Gene Transfer from Intracellular Bacteria to Multicellular Eukaryotes

New England Biolabs (United States) · J. Craig Venter Institute · +4 more institutions

PubMed
Indexed incrossrefpubmed

Abstract

Although common among bacteria, lateral gene transfer-the movement of genes between distantly related organisms-is thought to occur only rarely between bacteria and multicellular eukaryotes. However, the presence of endosymbionts, such as Wolbachia pipientis, within some eukaryotic germlines may facilitate bacterial gene transfers to eukaryotic host genomes. We therefore examined host genomes for evidence of gene transfer events from Wolbachia bacteria to their hosts. We found and confirmed transfers into the genomes of four insect and four nematode species that range from nearly the entire Wolbachia genome (>1 megabase) to short (

No related works found for this paper.