Prokaryotic diversity, electrified DNA, lightning waveforms, abiotic gene transfer, and the Drake equation: Assessing the hypothesis of lightning-driven evolution

摘要

In a review article in this journal [1], I discussed the feasibility of lightning-triggered electroporation and elec-trofusion acting as purely (bio)physical mechanisms of horizontal gene transfer and thus contributing to biological evolution, particularly among the prokaryotes. I would like to thank the authors of all commentaries on this article [2–6], and here I try to address the most important issues raised in them.