2012•Oxford University Press eBooksRequires access
The Polygenomic Organism
John Dupré
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Abstract
This chapter follows up in more detail the topic of symbiosis introduced in Chapter 5. Contrary to the common assumption that an organism can be defined by the common genome sequence to be found in all its cells, there is great genomic diversity in multicellular organisms. This is due to various forms of natural or artificial chimerism and genetic mosiacism, and also to the interdependence of the multicellular organism traditionally understood and its multitudes of microbial symbionts.