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Many cheeses require a particular species of mold to properly ripen. To produce Roquefort blue cheese, for example, cheese makers mix Penicillim roqueforti into fermenting curds. A recent study of cheese molds has revealed that over the past few centuries, the molds have picked up large chunks of DNA from other species in order to thrive in their new culinary habitat.
Dr. Rodríguez de la Vega and his colleagues were curious to see how mold species changed once people began using them to make cheese. After all, wild species of Penicillium mold typically feed on decaying plant matter, not milk.
So the scientists sequenced the genomes of 10 species of Penicillium. They came across large chunks of DNA that looked out of place. These pieces of DNA were found in identical form in distantly related species.
This kind of swapping is known as horizontal gene transfer. Sometimes an organism will take up a piece of DNA from another species and incorporate it into its own genome.
For years, scientists found little evidence of horizontal gene transfer among eukaryotes — species such as animals, plants and fungi. But now that scientists are sequencing more genomes, horizontal gene transfer is turning out to be more common than previously thought.
Tatiana Giraud, a co-author of the study, said that understanding this evolution could give cheese makers new ideas about how to produce new flavors.
But Dr. Giraud also thinks scientists who want to genetically modify molds to make better cheese should be cautious. Other molds that contaminate cheese might pick up modified genes that help them thrive.
Read full, original post: That Stinky Cheese Is a Result of Evolutionary Overdrive
