Lateral gene transfer

Figure 1. Four novel adaptations made possible by LGT. Upper left: a solar saltern in Eliat, Israel. Upper right: Utagawa Hiroshige’s Bowl of Sushi (detail of woodcut). Lower left: pepper plant roots infected by root-knot nematode. Lower right: pea aphids (Acyrthosiphon pisum) exhibiting green, red and yellow color polymorphisms. See text for details. Image credits: Upper left, R. Thane Papke; upper right, Wikimedia Commons; lower left, Scott Bauer, USDA agricultural research service, bugwood.org; lower right, Charles Hedgcock and Nancy Moran. trendiness factor is not such an issue. Not to mention the waste of every scientist’s time because new rounds of review are needed at every journal. One idea is every journal would have a front end and a back end. Papers would be submitted to the journal and receive a technical review. Then the editorial board would make the decision as to which of these papers would be in the ‘front journal’ and which in the ‘back end’ journal. This would be more like a newspaper, where journalists write articles, subeditors check them, and the editors decide where they should go in the newspaper.