> Many single-celled organisms collect genes from other organisms — a
process known as horizontal gene transfer — but multicellular organisms tend
not to. Tiny invertebrates called bdelloid rotifers were found to buck this
trend, taking on genetic material from a range of other species, including
bacteria, fungi and plants. Multicellular creatures rarely do this because
their germ line is sequestered in the gonads, explain Eugene Gladyshev,
Matthew Meselson and Irina Arkhipova at Harvard University. Bdelloid
rotifers are different. They often experience desiccation, potentially
opening up their cell membranes to chunks of outsider DNA. This unusual way
of injecting diversity into their genomes may help to explain why these
rotifers have gone 40 million years without having sex. (http://www.nature.com)

*******************************************************
* Search the BEE-L archives at:                       *
* http://listserv.albany.edu:8080/cgi-bin/wa?S1=bee-l *
*******************************************************