Question

Which of the given statements is incorrect about Horizontal Gene Transfer?

(a) The genomes of most organisms are derived by vertical transmission, the inheritance of chromosomes from parents to offspring from one generation to the next

(b) It is the acquisition of genetic material from a different organism

(c) The transferred material   becomes a temporary addition to the recipient genome

(d) An extreme example is the proposed endosymbiont origin of mitochondria in eukaryotic cells and chloroplasts in plants

The question was posed to me in homework.

Enquiry is from Comparative Genomics topic in chapter Collecting & Storing Sequences in Laboratory of Bioinformatics

Answer 1

Correct option is (c) The transferred material   becomes a temporary addition to the recipient genome

Best explanation: The transferred material becomes a permanent addition to the recipient genome. Although these exchanges do not occur very often on a generation-to-generation basis, a significant number can occur over a period of hundreds of millions of years.