Year: 2022

MINOR ROLE OF MUTATION. “In contrast to the decades long assumption that the driving forces of evolution were chance mutation (statistical replication errors) and selection it is now recognised that although mutation is an empirical fact it does not contribute very much to genetic novelty.” https://lnkd.in/dWwkKpD View in LinkedIn

EXTERNAL VARIATION. “Key roles now act as non-random genetic change operators in the production of complex evolutionary inventions.” https://lnkd.in/dWwkKpD View in LinkedIn

JUMPING GENES. “Several key players that organise the genetic content compositions of host organisms such as, e.g., endogenous viruses and its defectives, transposons, retrotransposons, LTRs (long terminal repeats), non-LTRs (non-long terminal repeats), LINEs (long interspersed nuclear elements), SINEs (short interspersed nuclear elements), ALUs, group I introns, group II introns, phages, plasmids.” https://lnkd.in/dWwkKpD View in LinkedIn

GENOMIC PARASITES. “We now recognize that DNA is not solely a genetic storage medium but is also a kind of ecological habitat. Many of such mobile genetic elements have been found within the last 40 years as inhabitants of all genomes.” https://lnkd.in/dWwkKpD View in LinkedIn

MOBILE GENETIC ELEMENTS. “Some cut and paste, others copy and paste and both spread within the genome. They modify host genetic identities through insertion, recombination, or the epigenetic regulation of genetic content. They co-evolve with the host, interact in a modular manner and additionally generate highly adaptive immune systems for host organisms from the simplest prokaryotes (CRISPRs/Cas system) to the most complex eukaryotes (VJD-Systems).” https://lnkd.in/dWwkKpD View in LinkedIn

SHORT- AND LONG-TERM. “Such mobile genetic elements shape both genome architecture and regulation. Therefore they are agents of change not only over evolutionary time but also in real time as domesticated agents.” https://lnkd.in/dWwkKpD View in LinkedIn

RNA DRIVES PROCESSES. “This world of life processes is dominated by RNA, whereas DNA remains a habitat, an ecosphere of interacting RNAs that behave like inhabitants and as genetic information storage.” https://lnkd.in/dWwkKpD View in LinkedIn

DNA AS HABITAT. “This change in perspective from molecules to agent-based behaviour will look at interactions of RNA viruses, DNA viruses, RNA-DNA viruses, viral swarms, and sub-viral groups like any ligated RNA stem loop groups that cooperate and coordinate (regulate) within cellular genomes as replication-relevant co-players.” https://lnkd.in/dWwkKpD View in LinkedIn

DNA AS HABITAT. “This change in perspective from molecules to agent-based behaviour will look at interactions of RNA viruses, DNA viruses, RNA-DNA viruses, viral swarms, and sub-viral groups like any ligated RNA stem loop groups that cooperate and coordinate (regulate) within cellular genomes as replication-relevant co-players.” https://lnkd.in/dWwkKpD View in LinkedIn

ECOLOGY OF MOBILE ELEMENTS. “Or they interact as suppression-relevant silencers or as infection-derived modular tools of non-coding RNAs that have built consortia of complementary agents that function together such as retrovirus-derived remnants, such as LTRs, non-LTRs, group II introns, rRNAs, tRNAs, spliceosomes, editosomes, and other counterbalancing modules.” https://lnkd.in/dWwkKpD View in LinkedIn