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09/12/11(Mon)02:12 No.29592681>>29592546
>Meselson’s study suggests that upon patching up their own DNA, the bdelloids simultaneously incorporate random scraps of DNA from other organisms. This so-called horizontal gene transfer is extremely rare among animals, and in the bdelloids’ case can include DNA from almost anything that was in their soupy habitat at the time things dried up, including whatever they just ate. In only 1 percent of the bdelloid genome, Meselson found dozens of foreign genes from bacteria, plants, and fungi inserted among the native nucleotides. It’s likely, he says, that during recovery from dessication, bdelloids pick up genes from members of their own species, too—dead members, that is, whose genes spill out of ruptured cell membranes. That process would provide the kind of genetic reshuffling that other animals achieve through sexual reproduction.
>“It may be their form of sex,” Meselson says. “But their partner is essentially dead. So you’d have to call it necrophilia. Actually, since they’re all females, lesbian necrophilia.”
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