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Do they evolved to do that? If that’s the case, what’s the use case? If not, it’s just a weird artifact of producing electricity?
by mromanuk 3y ago
Do they evolved to do that? If that’s the case, what’s the use case?
If not, it’s just a weird artifact of producing electricity?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kjkjadksj 3y agoIts a byproduct of the electricity. No use case. Authors were turned on to try it because this is already a lab technique in a much more controlled manner to get some nucleic acids into some cell. They wanted to see if there is an example of this in nature and the electric eel seemed like a good potential source of the electricity.
- pugworthy 3y agoRight. There is no genetic advantage for the electric eel to inject its DNA into others per se.
- mkl 3y agoIt's not (usually) the eel's DNA that gets injected, it's just whatever is floating near the victim's cells.
- pugworthy 3y ago(Im)precisely. As it were. A lot more likely to do odd things to bacteria and other simple organisms in the water than say local fish. Not to mention all the biota that's probably growing in and around the eel itself. Do they have gut bacteria for example? If so what's it do to them?
- kjkjadksj 3y agoEel is just providing the shock not the DNA. There is an advantage on the otherhand for species to be susceptible to this sort of horizontal gene transfer. E.g. bacteria populations will uptake environmental dna like this on the offchance they take up something beneficial (usually from other bacteria populations in the area that might have genes giving an advantage in that environment).
- pugworthy 3y agoI guess I'm not being precise in my comments. 100% I am agreed the eel's DNA is not part of the equation here.
- ChatGTP 3y agoWhat’s the use case for anything really ?