World News Trust World News Trust
World News Trust World News Trust
  • News Portal
  • All Content
    • Edited
      • News
      • Commentary
      • Analysis
      • Advisories
      • Source
    • Flatwire
  • Topics
    • Agriculture
    • Culture
      • Arts
      • Children
      • Education
      • Entertainment
      • Food and Hunger
      • Sports
    • Disasters
    • Economy
    • Energy
    • Environment
    • Government
    • Health
    • Media
    • Science
    • Spiritual
    • Technology
    • Transportation
    • War
  • Regions
    • Africa
    • Americas
      • North America
      • South America
    • Antarctica
    • Arctic
    • Asia
    • Australia/Oceania
    • Europe
    • Middle East
    • Oceans
      • Arctic Ocean
      • Atlantic Ocean
      • Indian Ocean
      • Pacific Ocean
      • Southern Ocean
    • Space
  • World Desk
    • Submit Content
  • About Us
  • Sign In/Out
  • Register
  • Site Map
  • Contact Us
  • The Techno-Feudal Method to Musk’s Twitter Madness | Yanis Varoufakis
  • Wars Aren’t Won with Peacetime Economies | Joseph E. Stiglitz
  • Strangers Behind the Trees: On the Death of Rayan Suliman and His Fear of Monsters | Ramzy Baroud
  • The Stagflationary Debt Crisis Is Here | Nouriel Roubini
  • How to Green Our Parched Farmlands & Finance Critical Infrastructure | Ellen Brown
  • From Great Moderation to Great Stagflation | Nouriel Roubini
  • The Road to Fascism: How the War in Ukraine is Changing Europe | Ramzy Baroud

Human gut bacteria have sex to share vitamin B12 | University of California - Riverside

More items by author
Categories
Edited | Front Page Stories | All Content | Education | Health | Science | Technology | North America | News | News -- WNT Selected
Tool Bar
View Comments

Illustration of bacteria in the human gut. Credit: Darryl Leja, National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of HealthIllustration of bacteria in the human gut. Credit: Darryl Leja, National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health

Dec. 1, 2022 (Phys.org) -- Your gut bacteria need vitamin B12 just as much as you do. Though DNA is usually passed from parent to child, new research shows gut bacteria transfer genes through "sex" in order to take their vitamins.

Without vitamin B12, most types of living cells cannot function. As a result, there is strong competition for it in nature. A new UC Riverside study demonstrates beneficial gut microbes share the ability to acquire this precious resource with one another through a process called bacterial sex.

"The process involves one cell forming a tube that DNA can pass through to another cell," said UCR microbiologist and study lead Patrick Degnan. "It's as if two humans had sex, and now they both have red hair."

Scientists have known about this process for decades, and its ability to transfer what are known as "jumping genes" between organisms. Until now, the majority of studied examples have been responsible for helping bacterial cells stay alive when people ingest antibiotics.

(more)

READ MORE: Phys.org

back to top
  • Created
    Tuesday, February 01 2022
  • Last modified
    Monday, February 06 2023
  1. You are here:  
  2. Home
  3. All Content
  4. Edited
  5. Human gut bacteria have sex to share vitamin B12 | University of California - Riverside
Copyright © 2023 World News Trust. All Rights Reserved.
Joomla! is Free Software released under the GNU General Public License.