WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tiny freshwater organisms that have amazed scientists because of their sex-free lifestyle may have survived so well because they steal genes from other creatures, scientists reported on Thursday. They found genes from bacteria, fungi and even plants incorporated into the DNA of bdelloid rotifers -- minuscule animals that appear to have given up sex 40 million years ago.
"Bdelloid rotifers are small freshwater invertebrates that apparently lack sexual reproduction and can withstand desiccation at any life stage," Irina Arkhipova and Matthew Meselson of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts and colleagues wrote in a report in the journal Science. Full story HERE.
