title: Localized sex in bacteria.
abstract: Electrophoretic studies suggest that bacterial populations consist of a number of independent clones and that genetic recombination is rare in nature. But DNA sequencing reveals that individual bacterial genes have a mosaic structure that could have arisen only by recombination. How can these observations be reconciled and what is their relevance to prokaryotic evolution?
authors.affiliation: School of Biological Sciences, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK.
authors.forename: J M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.forename: C G
authors.initials: CG
authors.lastname: Dowson
authors.forename: B G
authors.initials: BG
authors.lastname: Spratt
mesh_terms: D001419:Bacteria / Q000235:genetics*; D003227:Conjugation, Genetic; D004269:DNA, Bacterial / Q000737:chemistry*; D011995:Recombination, Genetic / Q000235:genetics*; D013045:Species Specificity; D014169:Transformation, Bacterial / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D004269:DNA, Bacterial