Donor cells were numbered to determine the transfer frequency and recombination rate was calculated as the ratio between the number of transconjugants containing the recombinant plasmid versus the total number of transconjugants.
Compared with transfer frequency and amount in bacteria, HGT events among eukaryotes and between prokaryotes and eukaryotes are rare, especially for multicellular eukaryotes.
Finally, we modeled the quantitative relationship between transfer frequency and evolutionary distance of exchange partners allowing us to quantify the degree of chimerism in each genome: the proportion of amino acid changes in the relaxed core genome that had happened in other, divergent haloarchaeal populations, before returning via HGT to a recipient genome.
We analyzed among-strain variation in extinction, successful transfer frequencies, developmental delay, and mortality for the nematodes evolved at N = 1.
These results suggest that the differences between the transfer frequencies of global, neighbour and other (non-global) regulatory genes are not due to the function of the genes they regulate.
Pre-incubation of the donor cells with DNaseI, by combined addition of DNaseI to the agar medium and to the mating mixtures did not inhibit plasmid transfer, and the transfer frequencies were similar to that of matings in which DNaseI was not added.
Many of these plasmids are conjugative and have transfer frequencies ranging from 10-2 10-7 10-2 10-7 10-2 10-7
High genes transfer frequencies were inferred for prokaryotic and early eukaryotic evolution.
These mutants were then checked in a standard plate conjugation assay and their transfer frequencies calculated.
The only significant hits, the LPS mutants, resulted in transfer frequencies ranging between 16- and 4-fold lower than wt (Table 2), a minor effect.
