In article <Co2Isu.n4r at gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca> lamoran at gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca(L.A. Moran) writes:
>I don't think that either the glutamine synthetase or the HSP70 data
offer
>any support for horizontal gene transfer. Maybe it is the EF-Tu and the
>ATPase genes that were transferred from eukaryotes to archaebacteria? (-
:
I think it is premature to decide what is the transferred portion, and
which is the receiving portion. It might be that they turn out to be
nearly the same size. I do not think that the elongation factors and
ATPases represent a small (!) transferred portion. The grouping of the
archaebacteria as separate from the eubacteria is also supported by
ribosomes and RNA polymerases (plus cell wall and membrane composition,
..). It has been argued that the functioning of transcription and
translation is so essential to the organism that the translation and
transcription machineries could not be transferred into another organism
that uses different recognition signals in their genes; however, I do not
think that this argument precludes the fusion of formerly independent
lineages. In the fusion the different components could adjust over time
before duplicate functions are abolished.
Peter Gogarten
>(BTW, I still haven't read Hilario and Gogarten (1993) because I
>can't find the journal. Maybe everything is explained in that paper.)
>Certainly not everything.
