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From: bchso@uhnix2.UUCP
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Life Classification ...further comments
Message-ID: <394@uhnix2.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 9-Jun-87 13:45:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: uhnix2.394
Posted: Tue Jun  9 13:45:29 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 13-Jun-87 08:49:16 EDT
References: <9543@duke.cs.duke.edu> <1125@ius2.cs.cmu.edu>
Reply-To: bchso@uhnix2.UUCP (Dan Davison)
Organization: University of Houston
Lines: 44
Summary: References please!

In article <1247@sigi.Colorado.EDU> eddy@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Sean Eddy) writes:
>>	No more than a handful of other organisms do.
>>
>Sorry for being a disbelieving soul, but I beg to differ.
>According to my information, the following is a partial list
>of bacteria shown to undergo natural transformation (these are
>genera, not species): [list of genera edited out] 

This list reads like the one from Levinthal, Ann. Rev. Microbiology 28:219-
230 1974.  Is it?  Or is it updated?

>I hardly consider this 'a handful of organisms.' 

Gee, Sean, I consider this a handful.  But this is a difference in
philosophy, since the mammalian cell culture transformation you cite
would never be the same transformation as bacterial, *to me*.

>And E. coli certainly *has* been reported to undergo natural
>transformation. 

References please?

>unless I seriously misunderstood the text, [it] refers to bacteria
>in which the mere mixing of bacterial cultures with exogenous
>DNA fragments (usually from the same species) results in
>uptake & integration of the exogenous DNA at some detectable
>frequency.
 
This sounds a little like 'mystery transformation' from the Rhodopseudomonas.
Doug Youvan (see this month's Scientific American, the mechanism of photo-
synthesis) has used a technique in which you mix bacteria on a plate then
put them in an incubator overnight (with candlelight and music) and magically
a few days later the genes have been transferred to the recipient.  As near as
can be figured out, last I knew, the speculation was that one of the three
bacteria you had to add to the mix (donor, recipient, and helper) actually
mediated the transfer.  Mixing donor and recipient together provided a nice
negative control.  I think this was suspected to be conjugative...does anyone
know differently?

dr. dan davison/ Dept of Biochemical and Biophysical Sciences/ U. of Houston
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