Clarifying the Unique Features of Bacterial Sex

Abstract

This chapter considers bacterial sex, the details of which turned out to be counter-intuitive, quite different from Joshua Lederberg’s conceptions that were influenced by the ways that higher organisms recombined genes. The contributions of Luca Cavalli, William Hayes, and later, Elie Wollman and Francoise Jacob served to clarify the apparent anomalies, finally to reveal that bacterial sex was very, very different from the modes of genetic recombination of other organisms. The French team clarified the stages of conjugation by interrupting the mating of Hfr x F- at different time points. HGT, can occur by three different processes: transformation, conjugation, and transduction. In every case, HGT is fragmentary and unidirectional, much different than genetic transfer in sexual reproduction in higher organisms, which involves the entire genome in a mutual, two-way recombination of genes.