Month: September 2022

PROKARYOTIC HOSTS. “In prokaryotes, the great majority of viruses have dsDNA genomes, mostly within the range of 10–100 kb. The second most abundant class includes small ssDNA viruses. Retroelements comprise a small minority (no retroviruses are known), whereas RNA viruses are rare.” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nyas.12728/full View in LinkedIn

EUKARYOTIC HOSTS. “In stark contrast to bacteria and archaea, eukaryotes are hosts to numerous, enormously diverse RNA viruses, as well as retroelements and retro-viruses.” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nyas.12728/full View in LinkedIn

EUKARYOTIC VIRAL PARASITE . “Compared to RNA viruses and retroelements, ssDNA and dsDNA viruses and mobile elements are less diverse and less abundant in eukaryotes, although both of these classes of selfish elements have been found in most eukaryotes.” https://lnkd.in/eU7uHHB View in LinkedIn

EUKARYOTIC VIRUSES. “Altogether, eukaryotes are hosts to 18 recognized families of dsDNA viruses that infect a broad spectrum of unicellular and multicellular organisms, and many unclassified viruses, spanning almost the entire range of viral genome sizes, from approximately 4 kb to almost 2.5 Mb.” https://lnkd.in/eU7uHHB View in LinkedIn

EUKARYOTIC DNA VIRUSES. “By far the largest and most common group of DNA viruses in eukaryotes consists of seven families of large viruses (including giant mimiviruses and pandoraviruses, with genomes in the Mb range) that share a common viral ancestry, as indicated by the conservation of approximately 50 (inferred) ancestral genes.” https://lnkd.in/eU7uHHB View in LinkedIn

EUKARYOTE VIRAL CLASSIFICATION. “This assemblage of virus families is known as nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses (NCLDV), or more recently, the proposed order “Megavirales.”.” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nyas.12728/full View in LinkedIn

“THE GIANT VIRUSES of the family Mimiviridae are themselves “infected” with a distinct class of satellite viruses, known as virophages, that reproduce within the giant virus “factories” inside protist cells and depend on the giant virus for their replication.” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nyas.12728/full View in LinkedIn

POLINTON VIRUSES. “Recently, an evolutionary link has been identified between the virophages and large eukaryotic dsDNA transposons of the Polinton/Maverick family (hereafter referred to as Polintons).” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nyas.12728/full View in LinkedIn

ANCIENT POLINTON ORIGINS. “The Polintons are integrated within the genomes of diverse unicellular protists and animals, suggesting an ancient origin, perhaps coincident with the origin of eukaryotes, as well as substantial evolutionary success.” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nyas.12728/full View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE is an historical vignette about the historic public health success of eradicating smallpox. Not only does the history contain the practices of experimenting on prisoners and the poor, it was also based entirely on supposition not evidence in animals. Preclinical studies were almost unheard of back then. However, this extremely severe plague is now eradicated in no small thanks to these very controversial approaches. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0300985810378649 View in LinkedIn