Something for everyone - Horizontal gene transfer in evolution

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is a sensational topic largely because its exploitation to date has been primarily journalistic. Properly packaged it captures the attention of a sensitized lay public and peps up circulation. HGT provides technical challenges for academic scientists as well as market analysts. For fans of science fiction as well as for environmental pessimists, HGT is the stuff of doomsday prophecies. Interest in HGT might even be seen as a reasonable response to the recent acquisition of genome sequence data and the need to understand how genomes exchange sequences.