Conventionally, scientists thought eukaryotic genes move only via vertical gene transfer, during which genes pass down from parents to offspring and mutations can occur to give rise to new genes and traits. But Huang and his colleagues, including plant biologist Chun-Peng Song at Henan University, have found evidence from prior studies that HGT in plants might be common. To investigate the role of HGT in plant evolution, the researchers scanned the genomes of 31 plants. They included species from all four plant groups, including mosses, ferns, and trees, as well as charophytes, a group of green algae related to modern land plants. They found that nearly 600 gene families in modern plants -- far more than were previously thought -- were transferred from other organisms, especially from microbes such as bacteria and fungi.