Bacteria don’t have sex as such, but they can mix their genetic material by pulling in DNA from dead bacterial cells and inserting these into their own genome. New research has found that this process — called recombination — is more complex than was first thought. The findings could help us understand why bacteria which cause serious diseases are able to evade vaccines and rapidly become drug-resistant.
Not necessarily through Darwinian natural selection, as your teacher was ordered to tell you in school.
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