A problem in the study of gene transfer in aquatic or
novel environments is that conjugative plasmids used in
such studies are of terrestrial origin and may not be
representative of or behave like those indigenous to the
environment in question. Dahlberg et al. (1997) isolated
95 mercury resistance conjugative plasmids from a variety
of marine environments by transfer to a model recipient.
There was a tremendous diversity in plasmids and 12