[legion]

Originally Posted by zakthor

Weirdest thing in evolution...

The evolution I learned in school is now called vertical gene transfer: getting genes from parents.

There's a new sort of evolution called Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT). In the past 75 years this idea went from becoming a hypothesis to an accepted theory.

Turns out there's cases where genes can arrive in other ways than just from parents.

One new clear way is via that gene editing stuff, but now scientists are comparing genomes and finding gene sharing cases that occured naturally too. Viruses can transfer genetic material and some species (mostly small things and plants) are more receptive of new genes via pollen 'n stuff. Totally makes sense that a successful species would be able to steal another successful species' IP.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_gene_transfer

I went down that rabbit hole reading about horizontal gene transfer a few years ago. The most interesting thing to me is that many of the genes related to human reproduction were transferred from viruses and then inherited.