Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is known to have contributed to the content of eukaryotic genomes, but the direct effects of HGT on eukaryotic evolution are more obscure because many of the best supported cases involve a new gene replacing a functionally similar homologue. Here, several cases of HGT conferring a plausible adaptive advantage are reviewed to examine emerging trends in such transfe...

Invertebrates can acquire functional genes via horizontal gene transfer (HGT) from bacteria but fishes are not known to do so. We provide the first reliable evidence of one HGT event from marine bacteria to fishes. The HGT appears to have occurred after emergence of the teleosts. The transferred gene is expressed and regulated developmentally. Its successful integration and expression may chang...

Genome-wide global detection of genes involved in horizontal gene transfer (HGT) remains an active area of research in medical microbiology and evolutionary genomics. Utilizing the explicit evolutionary method of comparing topologies of a total of 154,805 orthologous gene trees against corresponding 16S rRNA "reference" trees, we previously detected a total of 660,894 candidate HGT events in 2,...

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT), a process through which genomes acquire genetic materials from distantly related organisms, is believed to be one of the major forces in prokaryotic genome evolution. However, systematic investigation is still scarce to clarify two basic issues about HGT: (1) what types of genes are transferred; and (2) what influence HGT events over the organization and evolutio...

BACKGROUND This study investigated the outcomes of preoperative HGT as an adjunct treatment for severe thoracic kyphoscoliosis, its role in radiographic correction, and pulmonary function improvement, together with nursing strategy and incidence of complications. MATERIAL AND METHODS Eleven patients with a mean age of 18.8 years were retrospectively reviewed. Inclusion criteria were: patients w...

BACKGROUND The early phase of salivary gland carcinomas with high-grade transformation (HGT) is extremely rare. We reported one case of adenoid cystic carcinoma (AdCC) with early HGT, herein. CASE PRESENTATION The patient was a 27-year-old Japanese woman who suffered from swelling of the left parotid region. Most of this tumor consisted of typical AdCC histology, whereas the central area of t...

3 Problems encountered in phylogenetic reconstruction 4 Towards a natural taxonomy 4 Gene transfer and phylogenetic reconstruction 5 HGT can create patterns indistinguishable from those created through shared ancestry 9 Plurality of pattern and process 9 A population genetic point of view for higher level taxonomic units 10 HGT and the creation of metabolic pathways 11 Categorizing gene transfe...

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is the event of transferring genetic material from one lineage in the evolutionary tree to a different lineage. HGT plays a major role in bacterial genome diversification and is a significant mechanism by which bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics. Although the prevailing assumption is of complete HGT, cases of partial HGT (which are also named chimeric HGT)...

Many studies have reported horizontal gene transfer (HGT) events from eukaryotes, especially fungi. However, only a few investigations summarized multiple interkingdom HGTs involving important phytopathogenic species of Pyrenophora and few have investigated the genetic contributions of HGTs to fungi. We investigated HGT events in P. teres and P. tritici-repentis and discovered that both species...

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is a sensational topic largely because its exploitation to date has been primarily journalistic. Properly packaged it captures the attention of a sensitized lay public and peps up circulation. HGT provides technical challenges for academic scientists as well as market analysts. For fans of science fiction as well as for environmental pessimists, HGT is the stuff o...