epigenetics, what is it?

[Paul of Eugene OR]

You seem to have really glommed on to HGT.

Tell us - how rampant is HGT in multicellular eukaryotes, and how would that really affect the TOL?

Any "Horizontal Gene Transfer" that occurred would simply be another mutation that would then be subject to natural selection and survive or fail as natural selection did its thing. It would perfectly fit into the evolutionary paradigm.