{"id":79661,"date":"2018-06-16T10:02:36","date_gmt":"2018-06-16T17:02:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/for-the-first-time-scientists-have-caught-bacteria-fishing-for-dna-from-their-dead-friends"},"modified":"2018-06-21T00:06:56","modified_gmt":"2018-06-21T07:06:56","slug":"for-the-first-time-scientists-have-caught-bacteria-fishing-for-dna-from-their-dead-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/for-the-first-time-scientists-have-caught-bacteria-fishing-for-dna-from-their-dead-friends","title":{"rendered":"For The First Time, Scientists Have Caught Bacteria \u201cFishing\u201d For DNA From Their Dead Friends"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/for-the-first-time-scientists-have-caught-bacteria-fishing-for-dna-from-their-dead-friends.gif\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cHorizontal gene transfer is an important way that antibiotic resistance moves between bacterial species, but the process has never been observed before, since the structures involved are so incredibly small,\u201d said biologist Ankur Dalia of Indiana University Bloomington.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>Bacteria are slippery little suckers. They evolve rapidly, developing resistance to antibiotics and therefore becoming increasingly difficult to deal with. Now, for the first time, researchers have caught on film one of the mechanisms the microbes use for this speedy evolution.<\/p>\n<p>Two <em><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Vibrio_cholerae\">Vibrio cholerae<\/a><\/em> bacteria \u2014 the pathogen responsible for cholera \u2014 sit under a microscope, glowing a vivid green. As we watch, a tendril snakes forth from one of the bacterium, harpooning a piece of DNA and carrying it back to its body.<\/p>\n<p>That appendage is called a pili, and the process whereby the bacteria incorporates the new genetic material from a different organism into its own DNA to expedite its evolution is called horizontal gene transfer.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/cholera-bacteria-using-pili-to-harpoon-dna-horizontal-gene-transfer-antibiotic-resistance\">https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/cholera-bacteria-using-pili-to-...resistance<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cHorizontal gene transfer is an important way that antibiotic resistance moves between bacterial species, but the process has never been observed before, since the structures involved are so incredibly small,\u201d said biologist Ankur Dalia of Indiana University Bloomington. Bacteria are slippery little suckers. They evolve rapidly, developing resistance to antibiotics and therefore becoming increasingly difficult [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":476,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,385,412],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-evolution","category-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/476"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79661"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79798,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79661\/revisions\/79798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}