The furry puss caterpillar's venom packs a painful punch. Now new research shows it came from an unlikely source ( theconversation.com )

Yazer , 11 months ago

That’s really cool. I’ve never heard of horizontal genre transfer before. I’m curious how common it is

CanadaPlus , 11 months ago

It happens in higher lifeforms. Among bacteria and the like it’s extremely common.

Infrapink , 11 months ago

It's usually mediated by viruses. A virus infects an organism, picks up some host genetic material, and later jumps to a different host. At some point, the viral DNA is incorporated into the host genome and stays there, bringing the DNA from the previous host with it. This is how mammals got placentas. About 8% of the human genome is made of viruses that got stuck there