MICROBIAL RECOMBINATION AND PLASMIDS: Bacterial Plasmids: Conjugation, the transfer of DNA between bacteria involving direct contact, depends on the presence of an “extra” piece of circular DNA known as a plasmid. Plasmids play many important roles in the lives of bacteria. They also have proved invaluable to microbiologists and molecular geneticists in constructing and transferring new genetic combinations and in cloning genes. Plasmids are small double-stranded DNA molecules, usually circular, that can exist independently of host chromosomes and are present in many bacteria (they are also present in some yeasts and other fungi). They have their own replication origins and are autonomously replicating and stably inherited. A replicon is a DNA molecule or sequence that has a replication origin and is capable of being replicated. Plasmids and bacterial chromosomes are separate replicons. Plasmids have relatively few genes, gen...