Horizontal gene transfer in plants |
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Authors: | Caihua Gao Xiaodong Ren Annaliese S Mason Honglei Liu Meili Xiao Jiana Li Donghui Fu |
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Institution: | 1. Engineering Research Center of South Upland Agriculture, Ministry of Education, Southwest University, Chongqing, People’s Republic of China 2. College of Agronomy and Biotechnology, Southwest University, Chongqing, People’s Republic of China 3. Key Laboratory of Crop Physiology, Ecology and Genetic Breeding, Ministry of Education, Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang, 330045, People’s Republic of China 4. Centre for Integrative Legume Research and School of Agriculture and Food Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, 4072, Australia
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Abstract: | Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) describes the transmission of genetic material across species boundaries. HGT often occurs in microbic and eukaryotic genomes. However, the pathways by which HGTs occur in multicellular eukaryotes, especially in plants, are not well understood. We systematically summarized more than ten possible pathways for HGT. The intimate contact which frequently occurs in parasitism, symbiosis, pathogen, epiphyte, entophyte, and grafting interactions could promote HGTs between two species. Besides these direct transfer methods, genes can be exchanged with a vector as a bridge: possible vectors include pollen, fungi, bacteria, viruses, viroids, plasmids, transposons, and insects. HGT, especially when involving horizontal transfer of transposable elements, is recognized as a significant force propelling genomic variation and biological innovation, playing an important functional and evolutionary role in both eukaryotic and prokaryotic genomes. We proposed possible mechanisms by which HGTs can occur, which is useful in understanding the genetic information exchange among distant species or distant cellular components. |
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