In 2016, a study suggested that bdelloid rotifers cultivate genetic diversity by sharing DNA among themselves via horizontal transfer. But in work published today (July 12) in Current Biology, a separate research team identifies likely contamination in the raw data from the first report, challenging its conclusions and illuminating the need for further investigation.
“We know that bdelloid rotifers are very weird animals, so the [2016] story seemed possible at first glance,” says Chris Wilson, an evolutionary biologist at Imperial College London and coauthor of the new paper. “We’ve known for a long time, for instance, that they’ve got lots of unexpected foreign DNA in their cells that’s been stolen from things like plants and bacteria, so to a lot of people it seemed natural that they might be swapping DNA with each other as well.”
Bdelloid rotifers are microscopic, freshwater animals found around the world. And even though they ...
