Abstract
Publisher Summary The important role of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) in the spread of antibiotic resistance, the formation of pathogenicity islands, and selfish genes has long been established. HGT also has been suggested as a major force in structuring prokaryotic genomes, e.g. Lawrence and Roth's selfish operon theory. The fact that HGT occurred is no longer disputed; however, the impact of HGT on microbial evolution, in particular, on the ability to reconstruct organismal evolutionary history, remains controversial. This isolation with respect to HGT could either be caused by an environment that is less conducive to HGT or by physiological or genetic isolating mechanisms that evolve within the organisms. The horizontal transfer of genes and their complete uninterrupted incorporation into the genome of the recipient lead to a mosaic genome where different parts of the genome reflect different histories. It is clear that both vertical inheritance and horizontal transfer have played a role in microbial evolution.
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