Vertebrate Eye Evolution Possibly Related to Horizontal Gene Transfer

https://phys.org/news/2023-04-evidence-interdomain-horizontal-gene-eye.amp

Can "interdomain horizontal gene transfer" be explained in simple language to non-biologists?

This in apposition to it was designed?

Only if you make it that way

Here's a more straightforward article.

The significance is that instead of a gene being inherited 'vertically' over generations via ancestor-descendant lineages an important gene needed for vertebrate eyes was acquired laterally/'horizontally' from bacteria, similar to how viral genetic material has been incorporated into vertebrates not by inheritance but 'horizontally' via viral infection. Same type of idea. In fact, an essential gene needed for placenta formation in mammals came from retroviruses. Here, we see an important gene for vertebrae vision that came from bacteria.

It definitely suggests a long-term process, don't you think?

Thanks - now that is fascinating and opens up all manner of new pathways in research I imagine.

Just think how much more rapidly evolutionary development can proceed when the painfully slow process of linear evolution can be bypassed and building blocks borrowed from quite distant lifeforms?

Do you no longer believe in chance and necessity with respect to evolution?

"Do you no longer believe in chance and necessity with respect to evolution?"

I don't understand the question - in what way is the random nature of gene modification no longer a process of 'chance'? A particular virus or bacterium that carries with it genes that may be useful to a host are not being 'directed' in any way.

And 'necessity' - what do you mean by that?

Necessity is something that will happen like a rock falling due to gravity, just as specific chemical reactions occur when various chemicals interact with one another. The process of building a functionally complex system isn't haphazard, random genes from different sources as part of this process of getting necessary things to occur sound like a chance happenstance to you?

No. You didn't read the articles, I see.

Yes, correct

I don't use the term "necessity" in the same way as you. It isn't some necessity that a massive object falls towards the Earth, it's the inevitability of natural law as we understand it and cannot be otherwise

As for the evolution of life, it's necessary only for gene transfer and the adaptation that results to confer some small advantage, for that individual to compete with others of its own species (and with those of competing species) more successfuly and thus to produce more progeny over time.

By that means a genetic adaptation may be transmitted forward through more and more individuals, generation by generation, within a species.