ABSTRACT
The deliberate release of genetically engineered organisms into the environment may provide a variety of economic and social benefits. This chapter provides several hypothetical cases where the infectious transfer of engineered genetic material results in adverse environmental consequences that would otherwise not arise. It describes some of the mechanisms by which deoxyribonucleic acid can be infectiously transmitted from one organism to another. The chapter presents a short review of the current understanding of the importance of infectious gene transfer in nature, drawing especially on data for bacteria. It provides a general framework which describes the information necessary to evaluate fully the likelihood of infectious transfer of an engineered gene. Population geneticists must measure the rates of gene transfer in natural populations, and evolutionary biologists must determine the effects of engineered traits on the fitness of organisms.
