>Would transposable elements, such as retroviral genomes,
>intracisternal particle sequences, etc. qualify?
Howard Temin, your legacy lives on! :-) Actually, I don't think
retroviral phenomena are directly relevant to what I'm asking, although
they certainly are (must be) part of the picture.
Here's the sort of experiment I'd find impressive -- someone fix
the details here if necessary:
1. Determine the complete sequences of two simple eukaryotic
species. We thus know whose genes belong to whom, a priori.
2. Culture those species together with a bunch of retroviruses
(whose genomes have also been completely sequenced, of course)
which we believe may act as vectors.
3. Assay the mess, after a while, to see which genes ended up where.
Could that be done?
Paul Nelson