The work drives home the evolutionary importance of genes borrowed from other species.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences“Their findings demonstrate how complex structures like the vertebrate eye can evolve, not only by modifying existing genetic material but also by acquiring and integrating foreign genes,” says Ling Zhu, a retinal biologist at the University of Sydney’s Save Sight Institute who was not involved with the work. “It’s incredible.”
Bacteria are known to readily swap genes, packaged in viruses or mobile pieces of DNA called transposons, or even as free-floating DNA. But vertebrates, too, can incorporate microbial genes. When the human genome was first sequenced in 2001, scientists thought it contained about 200 bacteria-derived genes, though the microbial origins of many did not hold up.
Hoping to improve on those earlier efforts, Matthew Daugherty, a biochemist at the University of California San Diego, and colleagues used sophisticated computer software to trace the evolution of hundreds of human genes by searching for similar sequences in hundreds of other species.
Either way, the work supports the idea that horizontal gene transfer can help to endow organisms with new functions, says Julie Dunning Hotopp, a genome biologist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s Institute for Genome Sciences. Once these genes take root in a new species, evolution can tinker with them to produce totally new abilities or enhance existing ones. “It is the biological equivalent of upcycling that happens in my Buy Nothing Group.
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