Transferência horizontal de genes

https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=637780618

Citando:
"Is our human view of life and lineage profoundly wrong? Darwin's tree of life, by which many of us see our ancestry - with genes and traits passed vertically, root to branch, from parent to child and so on for centuries - doesn't include what science has discovered over the past couple of generations. Horizontal gene transfer or HGT - genetic matter we don't inherit but acquire sideways, if you please, virally from other organisms, even other species. Roughly 8 percent of the human genome arrived that way. The tree of life is really a web.

David Quammen traces the story and implications of this discovery in his new book "The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History Of Life." He's an award-winning science, nature and travel writer. His work has appeared in National Geographic, Rolling Stone and The New York Times' Book Review. David Quammen joins us now from Bozeman, Mont. Thanks so much for being with us."