Gene found to have jumped from gut bacteria to beetle
Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - 08:03
in Biology & Nature
(PhysOrg.com) -- Genes jumping between bacteria are rather common which in part explains their ability to rapidly develop immunity to antibacterial agents. What’s not so common are examples of genes jumping between animals or between bacteria and insects. This is why the findings of a team of researchers studying the coffee berry borer beetle are so surprising. It’s an insect that has, as the team describes in their paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, developed a means for excreting a protein that allows it to break down sugars in coffee beans, by somehow stealing a gene from a type of bacteria that lives in its gut.