DNA passed to and from all kinds of organisms, even across kingdoms, has helped shape the tree of life, to a large and undisputed degree in microbes and also unexpectedly in multicellular fungi, ...

In a recent study published in Cell, researchers used a multi-omics approach to profile the gut microbiomes and metabolomes of mothers and infants to determine the vertical and horizontal transmission ...

Biomedical engineers at Duke University have demonstrated a microbial community phenomenon that essentially equates to teaching neighbors how to complete necessary tasks by ripping out and sharing ...

The movement or acquisition of genetic material between organisms that is not the result of vertical inheritance (reproduction) is called horizontal (or lateral) gene transfer. Horizontal gene ...

A new study has shown that virus-like transposons, called Mavericks, are responsible for horizontal gene transfer (HGT) in nematodes. Researchers led by Alejandro Burga at the Austrian Academy of ...

Arpita Bose and Zhecheng Zhang explore genetic tools in environmental microbes, citing applications in extracellular electron transfer ...

An introner jumped between this species, a glass sponge, and an unrelated species of marine protist called a dinoflagellate. Image courtesy of the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, ...

In the continual arms race between parasites and their hosts, innovation was thought to be the key to a successful attack or defense that one-ups the competition. But sometimes, as in the corporate ...

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is the transfer of genetic material between distinct species, a process that plays a major role in the evolution of a genome. There is an increasing body of evidence for ...