Horizontal Gene Transfer and the Emergence of Darwinian Evolution
نویسنده
چکیده
In this article I discuss the broader view of evolution that is growing out of our increased understanding of the role played by Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT) in early evolution. Darwinian evolution, where genetic information and variation are passed to an organism by its ancestors, is seen to be only one aspect of evolution, and to have emerged from a world where the primary mode of evolution was the horizontal transfer of genetic information between organisms.
منابع مشابه
The Emergence of Darwinian Evolution
Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is seen to have been a pervasive phenomenon in the early history of life, necessitating a new evolutionary model for the deep past. We find that in this early time, HGT is the dominant evolutionary mechanism, in fact completely obscuring vertical descent at the time of the universal ancestor—a time of communal evolution out of which Darwinian evolution was to emerge.
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