
Gonorrhea Acquires Piece of Human DNA  - wglb
http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2011/02/gonorrhea-human-dna.html
======
beoba
When reading the headline, the first thing that came to mind was Oracle's
acquisition of Sun ;)

------
pyre
I admittedly just skimmed the article, but I thought that it was well
established that bacteria can acquire genetic material from other cells that
they consume. Why is it surprising that human genetic material can be acquired
this way too?

~~~
asdkl234890
I think it has been well known that bacteria can share DNA between each other.
But I think the fact they can take DNA from an eukaryote is new.

------
jberryman
Cool! I also was amazed when I first learned that the human genome contains an
archeology of ancient viruses whose DNA we incorporated over the millennia.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endogenous_retrovirus>

------
WWWWH
Looks like the original, open access, paper can be found here:

<http://mbio.asm.org/content/2/1/e00005-11.full>

I'd guess the obvious first question is, is this a sequencing artifact? I
wouldn't like to judge, but it looks like they are alive to the possibility
(different isolates etc.)

------
logjam
Interesting. It's known that viruses and transducing phages can incorporate
host DNA into their genomes.

And of course, going the opposite direction at a metalevel, one theory of the
origin of eukaryotic mitochondria is that it is of bacterial origin (an idea
proposed by, among others, Lynn Margulis, who was married to Carl Sagan)...

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endosymbiotic_theory>

...and leads to the following provocative idea: "According to Margulis and
Dorion Sagan, 'Life did not take over the globe by combat, but by networking'
(i.e., by cooperation).

All life is a tapestry.

~~~
araneae
It's not really a hypothesis anymore. Mitochondria have their own DNA so we
can put them on a phylogeny. The closest living relatives to mitochondria are
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphaproteobacteria>

Similarly, plastids are most closely related to cyanobacteria.

------
borism
at which valuation?

