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Originally published in Science Express on 17 May 2001
Science 8 June 2001:
Vol. 292. no. 5523, pp. 1903 - 1906
DOI: 10.1126/science.1061036
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Reports

Microbial Genes in the Human Genome: Lateral Transfer or Gene Loss?

Steven L. Salzberg,* Owen White, Jeremy Peterson, Jonathan A. Eisen

The human genome was analyzed for evidence that genes had been laterally transferred into the genome from prokaryotic organisms. Protein sequence comparisons of the proteomes of human, fruit fly, nematode worm, yeast, mustard weed, eukaryotic parasites, and all completed prokaryote genomes were performed, and all genes shared between human and each of the other groups of organisms were collected. About 40 genes were found to be exclusively shared by humans and bacteria and are candidate examples of horizontal transfer from bacteria to vertebrates. Gene loss combined with sample size effects and evolutionary rate variation provide an alternative, more biologically plausible explanation.

The Institute for Genomic Research, 9712 Medical Center Drive, Rockville, MD 20850, USA.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: salzberg{at}tigr.org

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