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"EVOLUTIONARY BAGGAGE is the part of the genome of a population that was advantageous in past individuals but is disadvantageous under the pressures exerted by natural selection today."​ https://lnkd.in/dTCZavA View in LinkedIn

MESSY AND MALADADAPTIVE. "Some theorists have argued that the eukaryotic nucleus is the more primitive, burdened with inefficiencies left over from a rather messy origin of cellular life. Others, as we noted earlier, see it as replete with maladaptive genomic accumulations, which may or may not affect regulation of gene expression."​ https://lnkd.in/d6GwkCt View in LinkedIn

ROLE IN STRESS. "Here, we observed that DDT is highly expressed in murine cardiomyocytes and secreted by the heart after ischemic stress."​ https://lnkd.in/dqk4pP3 View in LinkedIn

MYSTERIOUS ENZYME. "There is no known physiologic substrate in mammalian species for DDT, and the protein appears to have evolved from a primitive enzymatic host defense pathway. However, DDT is present in many mammalian tissues and is highly conserved among species."​ https://lnkd.in/dqk4pP3 View in LinkedIn

ARTIFICIAL SUBSTRATE. "D-dopachrome tautomerase (DDT) is an enzyme that catalyzes the tautomerization and decarboxylation of the non–naturally occurring substrate D-dopachrome to 5,6-dihydroxyindole. DDT may trace its origin to the invertebrate melanotic encapsulation response, which is a primitive immune defense against tissue invasion."​ https://lnkd.in/dqk4pP3 View in LinkedIn

VESTIGIAL "D-dopachrome tautomerase (DDT) is an enzyme that lacks physiologic substrates in mammalian cells, but shares partial sequence and structural homology with macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF)."​ https://lnkd.in/dqk4pP3 View in LinkedIn

OLD PARADIGM. "The immune individual rejects anything that is not “self.” Accordingly, if it were not for the immune system, opportunistic infections would prevail (as they do in cases of immune deficiencies) and the organism would perish." https://lnkd.in/ddVyNR5 View in LinkedIn

RAPID MICROBE EVOLUTION. "​In a decade bacteria can produce 200,000 generations — about the number of generations of humans there have been since our lineage split from that of chimpanzees. So it’s hardly surprising that in less than a human lifespan we’ve seen the evolution of new diseases such as HIV and numerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria."​ https://lnkd.in/dv-JiV6 View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE continues the contemplation of self in a biological sense. Our mindset is geared to assume that individuality is a reality in living organisms, and that competition between individuals is the grist of natural selection, niche expansion, and eventual speciation. But a new perspective is emerging, that the individual is a community of species that co-evolve, collaborate, and are inseparable. View in LinkedIn

HUMAN VERSUS VIRUS. "We might like to think of ourselves as the most “highly evolved” species but, in terms of how many rounds of mutation and selection we’ve undergone, we are one of the least evolved species. Around 10 billion new viral particles can be produced every day in the body of a person infected with HIV. By contrast, the total human population on Earth was no more than a few million until a few thousand years ago."​ https://lnkd.in/dv-JiV6 View in LinkedIn