Human cells are continually exposed to bacteria—the ones that live routinely in our guts and on our skin; the ones that infect us sometimes. That intimate juxtaposition has consequences. One consequence, unsuspected before but suggested by this Hotopp study in 2013, is that bits of naked bacterial DNA, possibly from broken-open bacterial cells, may often get integrated into cells (not necessarily germline cells) of a person’s body. Into cells of the stomach lining, for instance. Or blood cells. By “integrated,” what I mean is, not just absorbed or injected into the human cell but patched into
...more
