Tardigrades not only can repair their own damaged DNA as the cell rehydrates but also stitch in the foreign DNA in the process, creating a mosaic of genes that come from different species. “We think of the tree of life, with genetic material passing vertically from mom and dad,” said Boothby. “But with horizontal gene transfer becoming more widely accepted and more well known, at least in certain organisms, it is beginning to change the way we think about evolution and inheritance of genetic material and the stability of genomes. So instead of thinking of the tree of life, we can think about the web of life and genetic material crossing from branch to branch.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-11-huge-chunk-tardigrade-genome-foreign.html#jCp
Source: A huge chunk of a tardigrade’s genome comes from foreign DNA
