I am way out of my pay grade in this discussion, but that has never stopped
anyone on the BeeL.

Could the transference be from bacteria that is carried along from adult to
offspring? Why couldn't bacteria be a part of immunity? They act that way in
humans both inside the body and on the skin.

It seems rational that "good" bacteria that confer host immunity to certain
new pathogens would stay with surviving hosts, hence be selected and be
transferred to offspring. So you could get transference without genetic
changes to the host.

Another interesting aside- we do know that bacterial cause genetic changes
to human DNA during reproduction, so might it be that bacteria can act as a
mechanism to confer genetic immunity to new pathogens?

Bill Truesdell
Bath, Maine

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