A single gene from bacteria has been donated to fungi on at least 15 occasions. The discovery shows that an evolutionary shortcut once thought to be restricted to bacteria is surprisingly common in more complex, eukaryotic life.
Bacteria frequently trade genes back and forth with their neighbors, gaining abilities and traits that enable them to adapt quickly to new environments. More complex organisms, by contrast, generally have to make do with the slow process of gene duplication and mutation.
There are a few examples of gene swapping between eukaryotes — the domain of life that includes fungi, plants and animals — and even from bacteria to eukaryotes (see ‘Bacterial gene helps coffee beetle get its fix‘). But such events, known as horizontal gene transfer, were thought to be rare.
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But Daniel Muller, a microbial ecologist at the University of Lyons in France, and his colleagues have cast doubt on that assumption after studying bacteria in the soil around the roots of plants. They found that the bacterial gene acdS, used to promote the growth of plant roots, was also present in several types of fungus.
Read the full, original story: Extensive Gene Transfers Occur in Complex Cells Way More than Expected
