by Jamie Henzy
Although it's a regular occurrence for bacteria to acquire new genes whole cloth, by horizontal gene transfer, such events are rather rare for complex eukaryotes like us. Eukaryotes are vastly more inclined to take advantage of gene duplication events. An exception to this rule is the presence in vertebrate genomes of numerous retroviral sequences (endogenous retroviruses, or ERVs, for short) that were acquired...
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