Natural GMO
The genome of an organism is not a static thing. It is continuously moving. Genes change, they acquire extra functions or lose them. At sometimes a genome inherits new genes. At other times a gene is lost. Al together a genome is totally dynamic. One of those is the acquiring of genes through lateral gene transfer, or the acquiring of a gene without sex. One of the organisms that does this, are plants. Now researchers from the UK, France and Swiss found out how often lateral gene transfer occurs.
When you study the genomes of multiple individuals of a species, then you will find genes that are present in all individuals, those are part of the core-genome. Then there are genes that are present in some individuals but not in others, the so-called accessory genes. Together, the core-genome and the accessory genes form the pangenome. One way in which accessory genes enter the genome is via lateral gene transfer. The researchers studied this in a family of grasses.
Often this are useful genes
To be able to do this the researchers sequenced the genome of five individuals of the grass family. Doing this revealed that there were at least 168 genes coming from different plant families. Focussing on those genes the researchers analysed how often they occurred in other individuals of the studied grass family. While the researchers noticed that all of the analysed genes were present in some of the studied individuals. None of the genes were present in all individuals.
Subsequently the researchers analysed the dynamics of acquiring and losing those lateral acquired genes. They noticed that an individual acquires on average every million years 2 to 15 lateral transferred genes. Of those it loses half within 3 to 6 million years.
Focussing on the genes the plants keep, the researchers noticed that this are often useful genes. Like genes for disease resistance, or stress tolerance. Also, genes from other species that were functioning better that its native genes were allowed to stay. This last group in turn caused its native equivalents to be lost. Again, research shows us that nature is not making much of a fuss about where a gene is coming from. As long as it is useful.
Literature
Raimondeau, P., Bianconi, M.E., Pereira, L., Parisod, C., Christin, P.-A. and Dunning, L.T. (2023), Lateral gene transfer generates accessory genes that accumulate at different rates within a grass lineage. New Phytol. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.19272
Plant en Zo 