Esther Lederberg found that this curious F factor, bestowing the capacity to initiate mating, could be acquired by a bacterium that didn’t have it. How? Through a different mechanism, which I’ve just mentioned: transduction. That is, carried in by a virus. This was a dizzying compoundment of two kinds of horizontal gene transfer, functioning as a double-stroke process to move DNA between microbes. Take a deep breath and relax with your puzzlement as I say it again: transfer of the F factor—whatever it was—from one bacterium to another, by a virus, gave the second bacterium an ability to mate
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