You can thank your parents for your DNA. Because humans share genes through sexual reproduction, passing DNA from parent to child. It's known as the 'vertical transfer' of DNA. 

你可以感谢你父母的DNA。因为人类通过有性生殖共享基因，将DNA从父母传给孩子。它被称为DNA的“垂直转移”。

Now imagine if you could share just one or two bits of your DNA with an unrelated stranger, through a handshake, or other incidental contact—and that stranger inserted your DNA into their genome. No sex. No offspring either. That's called the 'horizontal transfer' of DNA. It's obviously not how humans do it. But it's a mainstay of single-celled organisms like bacteria, which use the process to share antibiotic resistance genes, for example.

现在想象一下，如果你可以与一个无关的陌生人，通过握手或其他偶然的接触分享你的DNA的一两比特 - 那个陌生人将你的DNA插入他们的基因组中。没有性别。也没有后代。这被称为DNA的“水平转移”。显然不是人类如何做到这一点。但它是细菌等单细胞生物的支柱，例如，它使用这一过程分享抗生素抗性基因。

And now French scientists have found that horizontal DNA transfer could be a lot more common than we thought in multicellular organisms, too—insects, in this case. Because by analyzing 195 insect genomes, they found more than 2,200 cases of horizontal DNA transfer between unrelated species of flies and butterflies, beetles and wasps. 

现在，法国科学家已经发现水平DNA转移可能比我们在多细胞生物中所认为的更常见，在这种情况下也是昆虫。因为通过分析195个昆虫基因组，他们在不相关的苍蝇和蝴蝶，甲虫和黄蜂之间发现了2,200多例水平DNA转移病例。

That total quadruples the number of horizontal DNA transfers previously described in all animals, plants and fungi. The study is in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [Jean Peccoud et al., Massive horizontal transfer of transposable elements in insects]

这使得所有动物，植物和真菌中先前描述的水平DNA转移数量增加了四倍。该研究发表在美国国家科学院院刊上。 [Jean Peccoud等人，昆虫中转座因子的大规模水平转移]

How exactly this genetic transfer happens is still a mystery. Might be viruses, or parasites, doing the DNA delivery. But whatever the cause, it suggests that the evolution of insects, on a molecular level at least, may be something more of a shared success story.

这种遗传转移究竟是如何发生的仍然是一个谜。进行DNA递送可能是病毒或寄生虫。但不管原因是什么，它表明昆虫的进化至少在分子水平上可能更像是一个共同的成功故事。

—Christopher Intagliata

[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]