Humans May Harbor More Than 100 Genes From Other Organisms
        
            By Sarah C. P. Williams, 
                Science News
             | 03. 12. 2015
        
                    
                                    
                    
                                                                                                                                    
                                                                            
                              
    
  
  
    
  
          
  
      
    
             
  Untitled Document 
  
You’re not completely human, at least when it comes to the genetic   material inside your cells. You—and everyone else—may harbor as many as   145 genes that have jumped from bacteria, other single-celled organisms,   and viruses and made themselves at home in the human genome. That’s the   conclusion of a new study, which provides some of the broadest evidence   yet that, throughout evolutionary history, genes from other branches of   life have become part of animal cells.
 
  “This means that the tree of life isn’t the stereotypical tree with   perfectly branching lineages,” says biologist Alastair Crisp of the   University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, an author of the new   paper. “In reality, it’s more like one of those Amazonian strangler figs   where the roots are all tangled and crossing back across each other.”
 
  Scientists knew that horizontal gene transfer—the movement of genetic   information between organisms other than parent-to-offspring   inheritance—is commonplace in bacteria and other simple eukaryotes. The   process lets the organisms quickly share an antibiotic-resistance set of   genes to adapt to an antibiotic, for instance. But whether genes have...
 
 
  
 
    
    
  
   
                        
                                                                                
                 
                                                    
                            
                                  
    
  
  
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