article_snippet.sent: Agrobacterium bacteria in the crop exchanges genes between species.
article_snippet.sent: The study focused around bacteria called Agrobacterium, sometimes referred to as ‘nature’s genetic engineer.
article_snippet.sent: Agrobacterium is specialised to transfer part of Agrobacterium own DNA, called T-DNA, to plants - and Agrobacterium was this T-DNA that was found in sweet potatoes.
article_snippet.sent: Agrobacterium is known to do something called ‘horizontal gene transfer’, which involves exchanging genes between different species - in contrast to normal gene transfer within one species.
article_snippet.sent: ‘The natural presence of Agrobacterium T-DNA in sweet potato and Agrobacterium T-DNA stable inheritance during evolution is a beautiful example of the possibility of DNA exchange across species barriers,’ said Dr Lieve Gheysen, one of the researchers involved.