Practice question

During natural transformation, competence apparatus imports fragments of extracellular DNA typically tens of kilobases long. If two genes lie close on same DNA piece, they enter same recipient together rather than independently. Close linkage shows high co-transformation frequency because single incoming molecule carries both alleles. As intergenic distance increases, probability molecule breaks between them rises, reducing co-inheritance. Co-transformation frequency thus inversely measures physical distance, analogous to cotransduction. Mapping exploits this to order genes and estimate spacing in bacterial chromosomes without conventional meiotic recombination.