Horizontal Gene Transfer and the History of Life

Daubin, Vincent and Szöllősi, Gergely J. (2016) Horizontal Gene Transfer and the History of Life. Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in biology. pp. 1-12. ISSN 1943-0264

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Abstract

Microbes acquire DNA from a variety of sources. The last decades, which have seen the development of genome sequencing, have revealed that horizontal gene transfer has been a major evolutionary force that has constantly reshaped genomes throughout evolution. However, because the history of life must ultimately be deduced from gene phylogenies, the lack of methods to account for horizontal gene transfer has thrown into confusion the very concept of the tree of life. As a result, many questions remain open, but emerging method- ological developments promise to use information conveyed by horizontal gene transfer that remains unexploited today.

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