NIH R01 · 2025
Horizontal gene transfer as the source of evolutionary innovation in eukaryotes
PROJECT SUMMARY Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) represents a dominant force in bacterial evolution, however its role in shaping the evolutionary processes in eukaryotic genomes has been a subject of intense debate. Class Bdelloidea of the phylum Rotifera, a large invertebrate taxon comprising close to 500 described species, has so far withstood any challenges questioning the massive amounts of HGT from non-metazoan sources reported in their genomes, and remain the record-holders among Metazoa with regard to the proportion of foreign genes, with HGT candidates comprising at least 8% of all coding sequences. Many of them have acquired spliceosomal introns and occur in quartets, which is…
From the public funding record at NIH RePORTER. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.