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Great leap

Natural History, Dec, 2005 by Graciela Flores

Genes that "jump" between closely related single-celled organisms are plentiful. But finding a gene that can jump between complex and distantly related species would excite any evolutionary biologist.

Charles C. Davis, a systematist and evolutionary biologist at Harvard University, and his colleagues at the University of Michigan and the Smithsonian Institution have discovered two such genes. The team had been trying to classify the rattlesnake fern (Botrychium virginianum), an exercise many biologists might find routine. Two gene sequences in the fern looked suspiciously similar to those of the Santalales, an order of flowering plants that includes parasitic mistletoes. The only reasonable explanation for the presence of Santalales genes in the fern was horizontal gene transfer--the passage of genetic material between organisms without sexual reproduction.

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Most Santalales plants are parasites that can have intimate contact with fern cells, and so the investigators suggest the genes might have moved directly from flowering plant to fern. Another, more speculative hypothesis is that perhaps fungi, which live within the roots of many distantly related plants, served as a conduit for the jumping genes. (Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 272:2237-42, 2005)

Great leap

Natural History, Dec, 2005 by Graciela Flores

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