Epilogue
This chapter reveals the importance of bacterial sex in evolution. After scientists realized that antibiotic resistance and the development of MDR pathogens were caused by bacterial sex, some evolutionary biologists began to wonder about the potential role of HGT in evolution. Scientists speculated that mobile genes might have played a significant role in microbial evolution. James Shapiro has argued genome change in evolution results from a natural genetic engineering process utilizing the biochemical systems for reorganizing DNA structures present in living cells. For billions of years—from the beginning of evolution—bacteria have been transferring genes horizontally, between species and therefore between lineages, interconnecting the branches on the tree of life. The promiscuous process that has scrambled the tree of life is bacterial sex, discovered by Joshua and Esther Lederberg as a laboratory curiosity that helped uncover the molecular secretes of bacterial and viral genes.