How to explain lateral gene transfer?

Living things are not independent on the earth. They are infected by parasites, fungi, bacteria or viruses and eaten as food. Genetic materials such as genes will also be transferred between some organisms and passed on to future generations steadily.

In recent years, it has been found that there are a large number of DNA molecules with transformation activity and competent cells that can actively absorb foreign DNA in the natural environment, which makes people have a new understanding of horizontal gene transfer in the environment and inevitably causes people to think more deeply about the safety of gems. If the exchange of genetic material between microorganisms in the natural environment is a normal ecological balance system or an extremely slow evolution process, then in order to improve agricultural production, even innovate the whole agricultural production, or control environmental pollution, or other applications, artificially adding a large number of artificially constructed gems or other GEOs to the environment may be an "artificial evolution" process to accelerate evolution. Is the result of this process happy or sad? Or both? At present, it is still an unsolved problem and a controversial one. The in-depth study of horizontal gene transfer and its ecological effects will help to make a new evaluation of genetically modified organisms and make the application of genetic engineering technology and genetically modified organisms play a more brilliant role.