title: Using Sex to Cure the Genome.
abstract: The diversification of prokaryotes is accelerated by their ability to acquire DNA from other genomes. However, the underlying processes also facilitate genome infection by costly mobile genetic elements. The discovery that cells can uptake DNA by natural transformation was instrumental to the birth of molecular biology nearly a century ago. Surprisingly, a new study shows that this mechanism could efficiently cure the genome of mobile elements acquired through previous sexual exchanges.
authors.affiliation: Microbial Evolutionary Genomics, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France.|Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), UMR3525, Paris, France.
authors.forename: Eduardo P C
authors.initials: EP
authors.lastname: Rocha
mesh_terms: D022761:Gene Transfer, Horizontal; D064349:Genome, Microbial; D020071:Interspersed Repetitive Sequences; D014169:Transformation, Bacterial