Can genes be transferred between species?

“Humans may harbor more than 100 genes from other organisms” (2015)

Excerpt:

You — and everyone else — may harbor as many as 145 genes that have jumped from bacteria, other single-celled organisms, and viruses and made themselves at home in the human genome. That’s the conclusion of a new study, which provides some of the broadest evidence yet that, throughout evolutionary history, genes from other branches of life have become part of animal cells.

“This means that the tree of life isn’t the stereotypical tree with perfectly branching lineages,” says biologist Alastair Crisp of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, an author of the new paper. “In reality, it’s more like one of those Amazonian strangler figs where the roots are all tangled and crossing back across each other.” […]

In the case of humans, they found 145 genes that seemed to have jumped from simpler organisms, including 17 that had been reported in the past as possible horizontal gene transfers.

“I think what this shows it that horizontal gene transfer is not just confined to microorganisms but has played a role in the evolution of many animals,” Crisp says, “perhaps even all animals.

[Study cited in above article]

“Expression of multiple horizontally acquired genes is a hallmark of both vertebrate and invertebrate genomes”

“Gene-swapping means you have alien DNA inside you” (2015)

What if a gene from an insect insinuated itself straight into your DNA? What if more than a hundred genes from bacteria did? Would that make you some kind of horrible Franken-human?

No. It would make you exactly what you are today.

It turns out that genes are quite capable of hopping from one organism into a completely different species. Not only do these genes jump, but when they land in a new host they can actively change it. This can give the host species new abilities, sending it down a new evolutionary path.