Year: 2022

GROUP VALUES WIN. "Alleles can spread throughout a population because of the benefits they bestow on groups, irrespective of the alleles' effect on the fitness of individuals within that group." https://lnkd.in/ddVyNR5 View in LinkedIn

BOLTING ON. "Negotiated surveillance is a general mechanism that has evolved to permit the incorporation of potentially self-replicating parts into coherent wholes. We see this, as Lynn Margulis long predicted we would, in the main transitions in evolution." https://lnkd.in/ddVyNR5 View in LinkedIn

"SYMBIOSIS has been critically important in macroevolutionary innovation. eukaryotic cells are themselves the result of several symbioses." https://lnkd.in/ddVyNR5 View in LinkedIn

"MULTICELLULARITY may also have been initiated by interactions between bacteria and protists." https://lnkd.in/ddVyNR5 View in LinkedIn

ADOPTED MULTICELLULARITY. "Certain species of choanoflagellates, the unicellular clade thought to be the sister group of multicellular animals, can be transformed into multicellular organisms by interactions with specific bacteria." https://lnkd.in/ddVyNR5 View in LinkedIn

INSOURCING. "The origin of placental mammals may have been predicated on genomic-level integration of exogenous DNA." https://lnkd.in/ddVyNR5 View in LinkedIn

GENETIC CHIMERAS. "Every genome is a historical product and, just like the cell, it is the result of ancient symbioses and horizontal gene transfers. We are genomic chimeras: nearly 50% of the human genome consists of transposable DNA sequences acquired exogenously possibly by the horizontal gene transfer from microbial symbionts to animal cells." https://lnkd.in/ddVyNR5 View in LinkedIn

PARASITIC OR NEW TOOL? "Although much of this added DNA is thought to be “parasitic,” some transposable elements may have been critical in creating new patterns of transcription." https://lnkd.in/ddVyNR5 View in LinkedIn

INSOURCED GENES DRIVE UTERUS. "The emergence of the uterus, the defining character of eutherian mammals, appears to have been facilitated independently in several mammalian families by transposons integrating into the regions controlling the expression of the prolactin gene. These transposons contain transcription factor binding sites that enable the prolactin gene to become expressed in the uterine cells." https://lnkd.in/ddVyNR5 View in LinkedIn

IMPACT ON ADAPTION. "Convergent evolution of gene expression via the insertion of transposable elements also suggests that such transposons can mediate adaptive evolution. The selective silencing of such transposons by DNA methylation or small interfering RNAs appears to be another policing mechanism that has facilitated evolution." https://lnkd.in/ddVyNR5 View in LinkedIn