http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120201093100.htm
It has been thought that for a long time that Horizontal gene transfer only occurred in Prokaryotic organisms. Horizontal Gene Transfer is the process of crossing genes, DNA, without sexually reproducing. This process never occurred in Eukaryotic organisms, since they need to sexually reproduce to cross genes. According to Ralph Bock and Sandra Stegemann their is genetic information stored in the green chloroplasts that can be crossed with each other by horizontal gene transfer. Sandra Stegemann says "We found a completely identical version of the chloroplast genome from N. tabacum in the two other species. The new chloroplasts had kept their entire genetic information and fully ousted the old ones. They were even inherited by the next generation." This experiment was brought about by transferring genes of plants of the same species, which is what is shown in the picture above. It is known in gardening that people will try to plant a different species of a plant onto a different species of a tree in hopes that they will both grow together. As an outcome the two plants will fuse together and the seeds that fall off and grow end up having the same traits as the two parents. This phenomenon was the basis for the research and is the basis for what the researchers plan to do for the future. They plan to find out why this horizontal gene transfer occurs in plants and to find the pathways that cause it to happen.
This research was published in: S. Stegemann, M. Keuthe, S. Greiner, R. Bock. Horizontal transfer of chloroplast genomes between plant species. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2012; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1114076109
It has been thought that for a long time that Horizontal gene transfer only occurred in Prokaryotic organisms. Horizontal Gene Transfer is the process of crossing genes, DNA, without sexually reproducing. This process never occurred in Eukaryotic organisms, since they need to sexually reproduce to cross genes. According to Ralph Bock and Sandra Stegemann their is genetic information stored in the green chloroplasts that can be crossed with each other by horizontal gene transfer. Sandra Stegemann says "We found a completely identical version of the chloroplast genome from N. tabacum in the two other species. The new chloroplasts had kept their entire genetic information and fully ousted the old ones. They were even inherited by the next generation." This experiment was brought about by transferring genes of plants of the same species, which is what is shown in the picture above. It is known in gardening that people will try to plant a different species of a plant onto a different species of a tree in hopes that they will both grow together. As an outcome the two plants will fuse together and the seeds that fall off and grow end up having the same traits as the two parents. This phenomenon was the basis for the research and is the basis for what the researchers plan to do for the future. They plan to find out why this horizontal gene transfer occurs in plants and to find the pathways that cause it to happen.
This research was published in: S. Stegemann, M. Keuthe, S. Greiner, R. Bock. Horizontal transfer of chloroplast genomes between plant species. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2012; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1114076109
