Flowering plants are stealing genes from other species without having sex. This process—horizontal gene transfer—is well known in bacteria, where it spreads antibiotic resistance, but its role in plants has remained unclear because past studies were contaminated by flawed genome data. This project will systematically scan hundreds of high-quality plant genomes to find out how often gene theft occurs, what drives it, and whether it helps plants adapt. If successful, the research will settle a long-running debate about whether horizontal gene transfer matters for complex organisms. It will provide the first baseline estimates for flowering plants, allowing comparisons with animals and fungi. The work is fundamental science—there is no immediate practical application. But understanding how foreign genes invade plant genomes could eventually inform strategies for controlling parasitic plants that damage crops, or reveal unexpected routes by which genetic traits spread through ecosystems. Similar fundamental discoveries about gene transfer in bacteria later transformed medicine; this project asks whether the same process quietly shapes the green world around us.
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Horizontal gene transfer (HGT)—the acquisition of genetic material from another organism without sexual reproduction—is recognised as being of great importance in prokaryote evolution, where it is responsible for the spread of antibiotic resistance genes among bacterial species. Its importance in eukaryote evolution has long been debated, with early studies erroneously inferring HGT because of contamination in reference genomes. Recent increases in the quality and quantity of reference genomes has led to well-supported examples of HGT of specific genes in particular species. However, the frequency and drivers of HGT, as well as the role that it plays in adaptation, remain unknown. This project addresses the extent and importance of HGT in eukaryotes using large-scale comparative analyses of flowering plants. Flowering plants are key components of terrestrial ecosystems, may experience more HGT than other eukaryotic groups due to features of their developmental biology, and now have sufficient genomes for comparative analyses at scale. We will perform the first systematic surveys of hundreds of high-quality plant reference genomes, allowing us to characterise the landscape of HGT within genomes and across species. We will also perform focused studies to understand HGT dynamics at the population scale, both in species with contrasting reproductive attributes, and in parasitic plants, where HGT may be most common and have the clearest link to adaptation. Overall, we will address the following questions: What is the frequency of HGT across flowering plants? How do genetic, reproductive and ecological factors influence HGT? What are the dynamics of HGT in parasitic plants? Our findings will examine an evolutionary process that may play an important but underappreciated role in facilitating adaptation. We will gain insights at a range of spatial and temporal scales, allowing us to investigate both broad patterns and detailed processes. By looking across hundreds of species, we avoid the idiosyncrasies of individual taxa and can generalise across flowering plants. Our results will provide key baseline estimates, allowing comparisons to other groups such as animals and fungi, and data to develop new theory. Case studies in parasitic plants will show the extent that foreign genes invade parasite genomes, revealing host specificity and adaptive HGTs that may be targets for control measures.
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