Bacterial natural transformation by highly fragmented and damaged DNA

13.12.2013

Kaare Magne Nielsen has published a new article.

Summary:

Our surroundings contain large amounts of highly fragmented and damaged DNA released from decaying organic material. We here show through laboratory experiments with microbes and various kinds of DNA  that bacteria are able to take up very short and damaged DNA from the environment and integrate it in their own genome. Some of these fragments may be thousands of years old and the mechanism investigated here has also been shown to work with a modern bacteria’s uptake of 43.000 years old mammoth DNA. Our study advances the understanding of the biological functionality of short DNA fragments found in most environments. 

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