Lateral gene transfer between multicellular organisms

August 15, 2007
From: Bill Rudman

Some years ago Skip Pierce sent an interesting message [#9830] about the work of his lab on solar powered sacoglossans and in particular on their discovery of the apparent lateral transfer of genes from algal food to Elysia clarki.

He has just sent me a copy of their latest contribution to this work, this time with Elysia chlorotica and its food Vaucheria litorea where they show the presence, in the genome of both the adult and prehatch larvae of Elysia, of three functional Vaucheria genes. As he says in his email to me
"We have finally been able to show to a level that can be published, that not only do elysiids have symbiotic chloroplasts, but the slugs also have acquired some of the algal nuclear genes needed for plastid maintenance."

As they say in the Abstract: "This is the first demonstration of transfer of functional, inheritable genes between multicellular organisms"

• Pierce, S.K., Curtis, N.E., Hanten, J.J., Boerner, S.L. & Schwartz, J.A. (2007) Transfer, integration and expression of functional nuclear genes between multicellular species. Symbiosis, 43: 57-64

Bill Rudman

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