INHERITANCE, the process by which some of your parents DNA is repackaged in the agreeable form of you, can be described as ‘vertical gene transfer’, i.e. the passage of information down a lineage. However, this is not the only means by which DNA information can travel.
I once spent six years conducting research into the mechanisms by which resistance to antibiotics can be spread within, and between, bacterial species. Much of this focussed on horizontal gene transfer (HGT), specifically the transfer between bacteria of DNA packages called ‘plasmids’, which can contain a full set of instructions on how to resist an antibiotic. Unlike inheritance, HGT is more akin to you reaching out and placing your hand on your cousin and acquiring their ginger hair, or nose shape.
This is of course a very serious issue, in fact it has never been more serious. The subject of HGT is a key topic in many aspects of biological sciences, and I’ve blogged about some of the interesting aspects of such DNA information transfer before.
In the past 10 years or so, an oft’ discussed topic of conversation at the scientific conferences I’ve attended has been the development of targeted antimicrobials. This is a move towards being able to ‘take-out’ (in the mafia sense) those specific bacterial species that are causing a particular infection/disease, but without providing a selective pressure to develop resistance to the drug on this, and neighbouring, bacterial species.
Mental Indigestion 