In the horizontal gene transfer you have one that’s f+ and the other f- and this article talking about E Coli specifically is pretty gendered.
" This chapter deals with F-pilus—sex hair, sex pilus, F-fimbria, and sex firnbria— of Escherichia coli. It essentially describes methods of assay and synthesis of F-pili, their functions and properties, and the mutant approach to the F-pilus problem. F-pili first observed, differed from common pili by the random adsorption of small RNA viruses along their sides. F-pili are both longer and wider than Type I or common pili. Frequent appearance of knobs or enlargements at their distal extremities is also used to distinguish F-pili in micrographs. Free F-pili from the supernatant of a culture of male cells can be treated with ultrasonic vibrations to yield smaller fragments"
why do they even have genders
In the horizontal gene transfer you have one that’s f+ and the other f- and this article talking about E Coli specifically is pretty gendered.
" This chapter deals with F-pilus—sex hair, sex pilus, F-fimbria, and sex firnbria— of Escherichia coli. It essentially describes methods of assay and synthesis of F-pili, their functions and properties, and the mutant approach to the F-pilus problem. F-pili first observed, differed from common pili by the random adsorption of small RNA viruses along their sides. F-pili are both longer and wider than Type I or common pili. Frequent appearance of knobs or enlargements at their distal extremities is also used to distinguish F-pili in micrographs. Free F-pili from the supernatant of a culture of male cells can be treated with ultrasonic vibrations to yield smaller fragments"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/chapter/bookseries/pii/S0065291108603641
They’re free to identify however they like.
Because it’s a parody of humans