Conjugation

Conjugation is about as close as single cells come to engaging in sex, and some of the terminology used to describe the process reflects that similarity. Conjugation, or mating, is a process of genetic transfer that requires cell-to-cell contact. The genetic instructions for conjugation are encoded on a double-stranded, circular piece of DNA. The circular DNA exists in the bacterial cell entirely separate from the much larger bacterial chromosome. Scientists refer to this specialized, extrachromosomal piece of DNA as a conjugative plasmid or a "fertility factor." Cells that possess it are donor or "male" cells, and those that lack a conjugative plasmid are recipient or "female" cells.

Conjugating Escherichia coli bacteria transfer DNA through cell-to-cell contact, which is made possible by the thread-like pilus that attaches to and reels in other cells.

There are multiple genes involved in the process of conjugation. Some of the genes code for a surface structure found on donor cells, the sex pilus. This is a threadlike tube made of protein. The sex pilus recognizes a specific attachment site on a recipient cell. When the donor cell comes near a recipient, the sex pilus attaches to the specific site and begins to retract, pulling the two cells together. This is a bit like throwing out a fishing line, hooking a fish, and pulling it into shore. The fishing analogy ends here, however. As the two cells draw close, their connection stabilizes and their outer membranes fuse together to allow the transfer of DNA from one cell to the other.

Only one of the two strands of DNA making up the plasmid passes through the fused membranes into the recipient cell. Thus DNA synthesis must occur in both donor and recipient to replace the missing strand in each. The genes encoding the enzymes responsible for this part of the conjugative process are also found on the plasmid. Once passage and synthesis are successfully completed, both donor and recipient cells contain a whole double-stranded, circular, conjugative plasmid. Thus there are now two donor cells when before there was only one. This process is so efficient that it can quickly change an entire population to donor cells. Some types of conjugative plasmids are transferred only between cells of the same species. Other types can be transferred across species; scientists call them promiscuous plasmids.