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Correspondence
Nature 446, 257 (15 March 2007) | doi:10.1038/446257c; Published online 14 March 2007
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Dermapathologist
- Indiana University School of Medicine
- Indiana, USA
PhD - Helmholtz International Graduate School for Infection Research
- Helmholtz-Zentrum fur Infektionsforschung
- Braunschweig Germany
Concept of a bacterium still valid in prokaryote debate
Thomas Cavalier-Smith1
- Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PS, UK
Nigel Goldenfeld and Carl Woese, in their Connections Essay "Biology's next revolution" (Nature 445, 369; 2007), seek a change in concepts of 'organism, species and evolution' because of the prevalence of lateral gene transfer among bacteria. However, it has been clear for half a century that biological species are epiphenomena of sex, and exist only in sexual eukaryotes — but not in bacteria, which transfer genes laterally without sexual cell fusion.
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