This article was originally published with the title “ The Recognition of DNA in Bacteria ” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 222 No. 1 (January 1970), p. 88 doi:10.1038 ...

Before we understood that DNA was the genetic code, scientists knew that bacteria transferred it between cells. In 1928, 25 years before the structure of DNA was solved, British bacteriologist ...

“Wild stuff does happen.” The trillions of bacteria in our bodies regularly exchange DNA with each other, but the idea that their genes could end up in human DNA has been very controversial. In 2001, ...

Mobile DNA elements, such as Insertion Sequence (IS) elements, transposons, integrative elements (e.g. integrative islands), ...

double-stranded DNA molecule that is distinct from a cell's chromosomal DNA. Plasmids naturally exist in bacterial cells, and they also occur in some eukaryotes. Often, the genes carried in ...

In the 1960s, Werner Arber observed a dramatic change in the bacteriophage DNA after it invaded these resistant strains of bacteria: It was degraded and cut into pieces. In an attempt to explain ...

Genome sequencing reveals that such horizontal transfer of DNA has been profoundly important in the history of life, and among bacteria it’s especially common, with particular implications for ...