Month: September 2022

THE CAPE FLORISTIC REGION. “We show that >40% of the current total of species was described within the first 100 years of exploration, followed by a continued steady rate of description. We propose that

VIRAL UNIVERSE. “There are an estimated 10(31) viruses on Earth. That is to say: there may be a hundred million times more viruses on Earth than there are stars in the universe.” https://lnkd.in/dzmPw57 View in LinkedIn

VIRAL PRIMER 101. The tiny replicons outsource the messy stuff that need complex machinery to their hosts, allowing viruses to be excessively streamlined and flexible. This flexibility gave some of the fastest reproductive cycles and greatest diversity on the planet. This deceptive simplicity has led many observers to believe that viruses are indeed simple, and many believe that they are actually non-living. Nasus non videatur in facie tua. https://lnkd.in/gR97A9s View in LinkedIn

VIRUSES are pieces of genetic code in a chainmail protein coat that can be crystallized and wait dormant for centuries for the right moment to animate. They are the most outsourced and streamlined creatures on the planet, also the most numerous and the most diverse. Contrary to the popular imagination, the majority are benign and live in collaborative symbiosis with numerous hosts including man. The influenza pandemic of 1918, smallpox, yellow fever, herpes, rabies, polio, smallpox, rotavirus, and HIV are headline viruses, but the majority of viruses are neither famous nor harmful. View in LinkedIn

CHANGING PERSPECTIVES. “First seen as poisons, then as life-forms, then biological chemicals, viruses today are thought of as being in a gray area between living and nonliving.” https://lnkd.in/gVBURjk View in LinkedIn

TOTAL BLANK. “The history of evolutionary biology is essentially devoid of considering the consequences of viruses, especially those that persist and colonize.” https://lnkd.in/guhpmyR View in LinkedIn

NOT IN THE WEB OF LIFE. “Viruses are the most abundant biological entities on the planet, yet most classical principles of evolutionary biology and ecology were not developed with viruses in mind.” https://lnkd.in/gPxMKj9 View in LinkedIn

“VIRAL MUTATION rates have been estimated by independent genetic and biochemical approaches to be in the range of 10(-3) –10(-5) mutations introduced per nucleotide copied, almost a million-fold higher than standard mutation rates operating on cellular DNA.“ https://lnkd.in/gDaeFeM View in LinkedIn

RECORD RATE OF HYPERMUTATION, in the HIV-1 virus genome: “an extremely high mutation rate of (4.1 ± 1.7) × 10(-3) per base per cell, the highest reported for any biological entity.” https://lnkd.in/gsDz7Gu View in LinkedIn

GENETIC INNOVATORS. “The huge population of viruses, combined with their rapid rates of replication and mutation, makes them the world’s leading source of genetic innovation: they constantly “invent” new genes.” https://lnkd.in/gVBURjk View in LinkedIn