Talk:Horizontal gene transfer/Draft

Bug?

There is a strange printing bug with this page. It views normally on the Firefox browser but only prints the introduction on my system. Prints OK with IE 7 though. Possibly there is a size limit issue? David Tribe 04:24, 23 January 2007 (CST)

Glitch not present on another system. May be just my Adobe software. David Tribe 19:45, 23 January 2007 (CST)

Spelling and Grammar

I corrected a number of spelling errors and grammatical "errors" in the article. Someone should check that all the changes I made are genuinely corrections. In particular someone should check that the term "even genes for SSU rRNA's" was not intentional. I reverted one change that I made to the spelling of archeal (from archaeal) since I presume it can be spelled either way.

Sadly the other errors also occur in the approved version of the article.

Found a number of minor errors, awkwardnesses, and tried to get citation style right? Hope I got it right David? Its a long and tough article and I'll go through it again. I removed some excess wikilinksand one duplicated reference. Its a very good article and glitches are hard to eliminate completely. Are you happy with the reference appearance? ... I'm not, butI cant see the rule that connects links and spaces so cant get things consistent.... Doooh Gareth Leng 17:22, 18 February 2007 (CST)

OK I've gone through it all again now, and taken out a couple of references that duplicated citations. Found a few typos and altered a number of phrases that I thought could be rendered more clearly. Done my best to make the references look clean. Reduced wikilinks by linking only to first mention.Gareth Leng 04:18, 20 February 2007 (CST)

APPROVED Version 1.1

Discussion for Version 1.1 stopped here. Please continue further discussion under this break.

2% per how often?

It would be good if someone would clarify this: "Microorganisms appear to be most affected by HGT, but even in microbes only about 2% of core genes are transferred laterally." Per generation? Per year? Per lifetime of the planet? Is there a particular 2% of the genome which is frequently exchanged laterally, while the rest of the genome never is? Or is there 2% which was exchanged laterally at some time in the past, while the rest never was? How does this square with the theory mentioned in the life article about HGT having been very common before the Darwinian threshold? --Catherine Woodgold 22:14, 28 April 2007 (CDT)

It not 2% per time. It 2% of the total number genes. But to address the point, one can add 2% can be identified or similar qualification (which I have). One place this is discussed is here http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0030347 . David Tribe 04:44, 29 April 2007 (CDT)

Thanks for your reply. It's a fascinating topic. The article in the link you provided seems to suggest that some researchers compared 40 genomes and found 2% of the genes seemed to be explained by HGT. That leaves open the possibility that if they were to add more genomes to their study, they might find still more horizontal-gene-transfer events between the original 40 genomes and the additional ones, increasing the estimate to more than 2%. Furthermore, some of the genes could have come from horizontal gene transfer from now-extinct species. How about changing this sentence "Microorganisms appear to be most affected by HGT, but even in microbes only about 2% of core genes are transferred laterally." to "... only about 2% of core genes have been shown to have been transferred laterally at some time in the past."

Political

I noticed that this article is listed under the Politics Workgroup. But what does horizontal gene transfer have to do with politics? May some editor/author please explain. Thanks! Yi Zhe Wu 11:10, 17 May 2008 (CDT)

I expect the author was thinking of the GMO debate. Greenpeace and other activist groups regard HGT as major risk with regard to GMO's that have antibiotic resistance genes. They are worried that DNA including such genes will spread to micro-organisms in the gut when we eat the GMO's. I agree this is not enough to be included in the politics workgroup. Chris Day 15:31, 19 March 2009 (UTC)