I've just learnt about bacterial conjugation and while it is interesting info about early sexual activity in microbes, one aspect confuses me and doesnt seem to be mentioned in the material I read:
How do the donor/recipient pairs find each other?
While cells in a culture all can have physical contact as they move about, either the F+ cell inserts pili into various cells looking for some chemical stimulus or physical contact with a F- cell provides some data that lets it know it has touched a cell with which it can now perform conjugation.
