Sep
25
Barbara H. Peterson on September 25th, 2014
Recombination with random extracellular DNA must often cause deleterious effects. For a single-celled species this may not be a significant problem because an unlucky cell simply dies, while other colonial cells continue uninterrupted. However, for multicellular species such deleterious mutations may have severe consequences for the remaining cells.
Continue reading about Evolutionary implications of horizontal transfer of short and degraded DNA