title: Microbial stowaways: inimitable survivors or hopeless pioneers?
abstract: The resiliency of prokaryotic life has provided colonization across the globe and in the recesses of Earth's most extreme environments. Horizontal gene transfer provides access to a global bank of genetic resources that creates diversity and allows real-time adaptive potential to the clonal prokaryotic world. We assess the likelihood that this Earth-based strategy could provide survival and adaptive potential, in the case of microbial stowaways off Earth.
authors.affiliation: Department of Statistics, Rice University, Houston, Texas, USA. siefert@rice.edu
authors.forename: Janet L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Siefert
authors.forename: Valeria
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Souza
authors.forename: Luis
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Eguiarte
authors.forename: Gabriela
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Olmedo-Alvarez
mesh_terms: D001419:Bacteria / Q000378:metabolism*; D018534:Earth, Planet; D018559:Exobiology; D019369:Life; D018535:Mars