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Cockroaches scurry around with thousands of pieces of bacterial genomes
Ars Technica • • science
Key Points:
- A new study reveals that horizontal gene transfer (HGT), the incorporation of genes from one species into another, is common not only in microbes but also in multicellular animals, specifically cockroaches.
- Cockroaches harbor significant amounts of bacterial DNA, particularly from their endosymbiotic bacteria Blattabacterium, with thousands of bacterial DNA fragments found across different species.
- Most bacterial DNA inserts in cockroach genomes are short, non-coding sequences that likely do not impact the host but persist due to low evolutionary pressure to remove them.
- The study suggests that HGT is a regular occurrence over evolutionary timescales and may contribute more to animal genome diversity than previously recognized.
- Advances in DNA sequencing technology, such as long-read sequencing, have enabled clearer identification of HGT events by distinguishing true bacterial DNA integration from contamination.
