The basic gist is that some parasitic wasps also transfer a virus to their caterpillar hosts. That virus has now been shown to insert and transfer some wasps genes to some non-host caterpillars.
The introduction mentions wolbachia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolbachia - which is an awesome bacterial parasite; it has also transferred genes to hosts. Researchers thought the bacteriophage in Wolbachia helped take part in horizontal gene transfer (HGT), which this study backs up nicely.
My grandfather found a parthenogenetic spider and wanted to investigate the possibility that Wolbachia was somehow responsible. Don't think he made much progress though, it was near the end of his life. Here's the article about the spider:
http://www.americanarachnology.org/joa_free/joa_v31_n2/arac-...
Semi-relevant: Richard Dawkins touches upon the relationship between the genes of parasites and hosts in the Chap. 13, "The Long Reach of the Gene" (added in 2. ed.) of his book "The Selfish Gene".
He says that if the parasite genes are "transmitted to future generations via the same vehicles as the host's genes [...], the parasite will do all that it can to help the host, not only to survive, but to reproduce. Over evolutionary time it will cease to be a parasite, will cooperate with the host, and may eventually merge into the host's tissues and become unrecognizable as a parasite at all." [0]
P.S. Apropos of Wolbachia, did you also play MGS V recently?;P
And between members of a species - virii when reproducing using host cells can end up with transcription errors just as normal dna transcription does - and the host's genes end up part of the virus, which then infects others - this is how virii mutate and jump species.
Within 20 years gaian thinking probably won't seem so silly - we are part of a macro organism.
I had that same feeling rather early on when I reached this:
> Opponents have frequently maintained that an interspecies gene transfer done in a laboratory—the insertion of a bacterial gene into corn to make it insect-resistant, for example—would never occur naturally and is therefore unethical and potentially unsafe.
> The new study, published Thursday in the journal PLOS Genetics, undermines that argument.
> "You realize that nature is creating genetically modified organisms all the time,” said Salvador Herrero, a geneticist at the University of Valencia, Spain, and co-author of the study. “It’s not so weird to transfer genes from one organism to another.
I don't see how these results undermine the argument in any way, _whatsoever_, Mr. Naik.
The only way it can undermine an anti-GMO agenda is to "equate" human genetic modifications to nature's genetic modifications. The gene vectors we create are different.
Herrero's point laid out here also appears taken out of the scope of the results of the original study. Or, more accurately, Herrero's point was taken out of context by the authors of the WSJ piece.
Article doesn't match the headline at all. The study seems to say "Hey, when your body produces and injects viruses into a host, you can transfer genes", which is obviously a small subset of biological interactions.
It also casually lumps horizontal transfer between bacteria into the same category as multicellular life. We _know_ how bacteria do it, and it's not how most eukaryotic cells are built.
So...in other words gmo foods can potentially change human genes or at least add new genes. How in the world would this ever be an argument for gmo foods. ::mind boggled::
Nowhere in the article it says that eating foods is responsible for gene transfers from GMOs into you. The point of research is that gene jump between species. Naturally, through vectors such as viruses. So, when scientists introduce say a rapid-growth potato gene into salmon, it's not necessarily such a far fetched gene manipulation. These types of genetic jumps happen naturally all the time.
Opponents of GMOs are very vocal about introduction of "foreign" genes into species. ("How can we have a rapid-growth salmon, if they escape into the environment?" is a typical argument.) But that argument looks pretty feeble if you consider the above mentioned research.
> So...in other words gmo foods can potentially change human genes or at least add new genes. How in the world would this ever be an argument for gmo foods. ::mind boggled::
Its an argument for GMO foods (or, more precisely, an illustration of the naivete of a common argument against GMO foods) in that it illustrates that the processes used in GMO foods (but accelerated and more focused) are not as dissimilar to the processes that are responsible for genetic change in the wild (and which are accelerated and more focused in traditional breeding), so that the difference in kind that anti-GMO crusaders try to draw between evil GMOs, on the one hand, and safe products of traditional breeding, on the other -- on the basis of the methods that produce the genetic changes in each -- is an illusory distinction.
[+] [-] Amorymeltzer|10 years ago|reply
The basic gist is that some parasitic wasps also transfer a virus to their caterpillar hosts. That virus has now been shown to insert and transfer some wasps genes to some non-host caterpillars.
The introduction mentions wolbachia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolbachia - which is an awesome bacterial parasite; it has also transferred genes to hosts. Researchers thought the bacteriophage in Wolbachia helped take part in horizontal gene transfer (HGT), which this study backs up nicely.
[+] [-] jhedwards|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eivarv|10 years ago|reply
Semi-relevant: Richard Dawkins touches upon the relationship between the genes of parasites and hosts in the Chap. 13, "The Long Reach of the Gene" (added in 2. ed.) of his book "The Selfish Gene".
He says that if the parasite genes are "transmitted to future generations via the same vehicles as the host's genes [...], the parasite will do all that it can to help the host, not only to survive, but to reproduce. Over evolutionary time it will cease to be a parasite, will cooperate with the host, and may eventually merge into the host's tissues and become unrecognizable as a parasite at all." [0]
P.S. Apropos of Wolbachia, did you also play MGS V recently?;P
[0]: https://books.google.no/books?id=koaD_Aod_V0C&lpg=PT343&ots=...
[+] [-] madaxe_again|10 years ago|reply
Within 20 years gaian thinking probably won't seem so silly - we are part of a macro organism.
[+] [-] adamgravitis|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grkvlt|10 years ago|reply
1. http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/plural-of-virus.html
[+] [-] Artistry121|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikro2nd|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FilterSweep|10 years ago|reply
> Opponents have frequently maintained that an interspecies gene transfer done in a laboratory—the insertion of a bacterial gene into corn to make it insect-resistant, for example—would never occur naturally and is therefore unethical and potentially unsafe.
> The new study, published Thursday in the journal PLOS Genetics, undermines that argument.
> "You realize that nature is creating genetically modified organisms all the time,” said Salvador Herrero, a geneticist at the University of Valencia, Spain, and co-author of the study. “It’s not so weird to transfer genes from one organism to another.
I don't see how these results undermine the argument in any way, _whatsoever_, Mr. Naik.
The only way it can undermine an anti-GMO agenda is to "equate" human genetic modifications to nature's genetic modifications. The gene vectors we create are different.
Herrero's point laid out here also appears taken out of the scope of the results of the original study. Or, more accurately, Herrero's point was taken out of context by the authors of the WSJ piece.
[+] [-] oldmanjay|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SixSigma|10 years ago|reply
"Genes typically persist if they provide some benefit."
Or genes persist if they don't provide some detriment. Evolution is a value maximising process, so it minimises costs of reproduction.
[+] [-] eivarv|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ergothus|10 years ago|reply
It also casually lumps horizontal transfer between bacteria into the same category as multicellular life. We _know_ how bacteria do it, and it's not how most eukaryotic cells are built.
[+] [-] codeddesign|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mudil|10 years ago|reply
Opponents of GMOs are very vocal about introduction of "foreign" genes into species. ("How can we have a rapid-growth salmon, if they escape into the environment?" is a typical argument.) But that argument looks pretty feeble if you consider the above mentioned research.
[+] [-] dragonwriter|10 years ago|reply
Its an argument for GMO foods (or, more precisely, an illustration of the naivete of a common argument against GMO foods) in that it illustrates that the processes used in GMO foods (but accelerated and more focused) are not as dissimilar to the processes that are responsible for genetic change in the wild (and which are accelerated and more focused in traditional breeding), so that the difference in kind that anti-GMO crusaders try to draw between evil GMOs, on the one hand, and safe products of traditional breeding, on the other -- on the basis of the methods that produce the genetic changes in each -- is an illusory distinction.
[+] [-] riemannzeta|10 years ago|reply
Quite a visionary that man.