“…E xtracellular DNA uptake occurs during normal and cancer tissue growth (Bergsmedh et al, 2006;Yan et al, 2006) and during viral and bacterial infections (Chu et al, 2006;Metifiot et al, 2007), and is routinely used in genetic manipulations and experimental animals (Tanswell et al, 1998;Glasspool-Malone et al, 2002;Freitas et al, 2007). The entry of foreign DNA (fDNA) is harmful to the host cell (Li et al, 1999), causing DNA-dependent cell death, whereas DNase treatment before transfection prevented cell death (Stacey et al, 1993).…”