Bacterial DNA uptake and the evolution of sex

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Sexual reproduction poses a serious problem for evolutionary biologists. Its main consequence is to shuffle combinations of genes, but we do not know why this is beneficial. Comparison with bacteria can clarify the options dramatically-if bacteria have no equivalent to sex, then whatever problem sex solves for eukaryotes must be one that bacteria don't face. Bacteria do have processes that sometimes create new combinations of genes by moving DNA from one cell to another, but these processes likely have other, more important, functions. In particular, my research suggests that bacteria bring DNA fragments into their cells to use as food rather than as sources of new genes.