this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2023
34 points (100.0% liked)

Science

13013 readers
21 users here now

Studies, research findings, and interesting tidbits from the ever-expanding scientific world.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:

Be sure to also check out these other Fediverse science communities:

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
alyaza@beehaw.org
Gaywallet@beehaw.org
remington@beehaw.org
34
The furry puss caterpillar's venom packs a painful punch. Now new research shows it came from an unlikely source (theconversation.com)
submitted 1 year ago by Peaces@infosec.pub to c/science@beehaw.org
3 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2305871120

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] Yazer@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's really cool. I've never heard of horizontal genre transfer before. I'm curious how common it is

[โ€“] Infrapink@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's usually mediated by viruses. A virus infects an organism, picks up some host genetic material, and later jumps to a different host. At some point, the viral DNA is incorporated into the host genome and stays there, bringing the DNA from the previous host with it. This is how mammals got placentas. About 8% of the human genome is made of viruses that got stuck there

load more comments (1 replies)