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Image Credit Hwan Su Yoon

…”The major finding of the study is the microbial world, which we know is full of valuable genes, can move these genes between organisms according to need,” said Debashish Bhattacharya, a study co-author and distinguished professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources at Rutgers. “When a microbe has a gene deficit, it can in some cases fill that deficit by grabbing the same gene from the environment. This shows how fluid microbial genomes really are.”

“But people should not get the idea that humans will be grabbing bacterial genes any time soon, because they have a sequestered (protected) germ line,” said Dana C. Price, a study co-author and associate research professor in the Department of Plant Biology and Pathology in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences. “This is about microbial life such as bacteria and single-celled eukaryotes.”…