Commenting here in accordance to my thoughts in the exploration thread regarding lateral gene transfer and in light of recent discussion for a mechanism for discounts: Exploration
I think for the purposes of the Microbe stage, it’s good enough to represent lateral genetic transfer through the mechanism of transformation. I’m using Nick Lane’s “The Vital Question” as a source of information here, where he says that especially for prokaryotes, lateral genetic transfer literarily is almost like a buffet where prokaryotes are able to take up important environmental adaptations like a trip to the groceries. This leads to prokaryotes being incentivized to being even more simple and energy efficient, having only enough genetic material to be able to rapidly uptake said adaptations.
With this in mind, it can be made so that a player finds genetic information (clumps of DNA) floating around the environment they can take up for a discount applied on their next editor trip. This can also incentivize exploration, as commented in the previous thread. And as I said above, this mechanism can serve to be a good enough representation of genetic transfer for the purposes of the stage.