Abstract

Abstract: Parasitic plants and their hosts have proven remarkably adept at exchanging fragments of mitochondrial DNA. Two recent studies provide important mechanistic insights into the pattern, process and consequences of horizontal gene transfer, demonstrating that genes can be transferred in large chunks and that gene conversion between foreign and native genes leads to intragenic mosaicism. A model involving duplicative horizontal gene transfer and differential gene conversion is proposed as a hitherto unrecognized source of genetic diversity.

See research article: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7007/8/150

Details

Title
Gene transfer: anything goes in plant mitochondria
Author
Archibald, John M; Richards, Thomas A
Pages
147
Publication year
2010
Publication date
2010
Publisher
BioMed Central
e-ISSN
17417007
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
902265189
Copyright
© 2010 Archibald and Richards; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.