{"id":35895,"date":"2022-05-15T19:49:04","date_gmt":"2022-05-16T00:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=35895"},"modified":"2022-05-15T19:49:04","modified_gmt":"2022-05-16T00:49:04","slug":"job-of-courier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2022\/05\/15\/job-of-courier\/","title":{"rendered":"Job Of Courier"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Horizontal_gene_transfer\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Horizontal gene transfer<\/a> refers to the physical movement of genes from one organism to another. I had always assumed it was a unicellular trait, because &#8230; well, because. So this surprised me:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Many snakes make meals of frogs, but some appear to be transferring their DNA into the amphibians as well. A genetic analysis suggests that parasites shared between snakes and frogs may facilitate the movement of genetic material from one species to another.<\/p>\n<p>The \u201chorizontal\u201d transfer of DNA between species was long considered a rare event that took place only between microbes, but\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/2306227-whiteflies-have-acquired-dozens-of-genes-from-plants-they-eat\/\">there is growing evidence<\/a>\u00a0that the process has been going on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/dn14992-space-invader-dna-infiltrated-mammalian-genomes\/\">all over the tree of life<\/a>.<em> [&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/2317502-frogs-have-acquired-dna-from-snakes-with-the-help-of-parasites\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Frogs have acquired DNA from snakes with the help of parasites<\/a>,&#8221; Jake Buehler, <\/em><strong>NewScientist<\/strong><em> (30 April 2022, paywall)]<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So parasites not only suck on your resources, but they gift you with genes you may not want.<\/p>\n<p>Nifty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Horizontal gene transfer refers to the physical movement of genes from one organism to another. I had always assumed it was a unicellular trait, because &#8230; well, because. So this surprised me: Many snakes make meals of frogs, but some appear to be transferring their DNA into the amphibians as \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2022\/05\/15\/job-of-courier\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35895"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35896,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35895\/revisions\/35896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}