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CANCER represents a very bizarre cellular dysfunction, where a part of the body decides to rebel, to acquire genes in order to speed that rebellion, and increasingly acts like an autonomous cellular organization with an enormously high mutation rate. View in LinkedIn

SOME VIRUSES do cause diseases, but the most interesting examples are in oncology. While the focus of this thread is not to pathologize viruses, their role in cancer is rather remarkable. Other viral diseases are also very interesting. View in LinkedIn

MITOCHONDRIAL ORIGINS. "It is noteworthy that such a global replacement of cellular proteins by viral-encoded functional analogs actually occurred in the course of mitochondial evolution." https://lnkd.in/dNTbYMw View in LinkedIn

VIRAL DNA IN HUMAN GENOME. "Human endogenous retrovirus (HERV) proviruses comprise a significant part of the human genome, with approximately 98,000 ERV elements and fragments making up nearly 8%." Some infected human genomes at least 150,000 years ago. https://lnkd.in/dwG2wT9 View in LinkedIn

VIRUS TO EUKARYOTIC CELLS. "If DNA and DNA replication proteins originated in viruses, one can imagine that DNA replication mechanisms have been transferred from viruses to cells. Many protein phylogenies support the idea of ancient transfers of replicative proteins between cells and viruses." https://lnkd.in/dNTbYMw View in LinkedIn

VIRAL DNA INSERTED INTO HOST. "The replication cycle of a retrovirus entails the insertion ("integration") of a DNA copy of the viral genome into the nuclear genome of the host cell. Most retroviruses infect somatic cells, but occasional infection of germline cells (cells that produce eggs and sperm) can also occur. The retroviral proteins themselves have (sometimes) been co-opted to serve novel host functions, particularly in reproduction and development. " https://lnkd.in/dwG2wT9 View in LinkedIn

VIRAL UPPER RANGE. "Some of them (e.g., T4-phages) have reached a high level of complexity in their DNA replication machinery, and consequently encode functional analogs for all proteins involved in cellular DNA replication." https://lnkd.in/dNTbYMw View in LinkedIn

EXOTIC VIRUS PROPERTIES. "Viruses can have exotic properties: they can replicate in dead cells, repair radiation-damaged hosts, or recombine with other dead viruses and generate an intact cell. In some cases, hosts can benefit from viruses. An ancient retrovirus supported the development of the placenta in mammals." https://lnkd.in/eGaw2Kq View in LinkedIn

RANGE OF SOPHISTICATION. "Some DNA viruses replicate their genome using only replication proteins encoded by their host (with the exception of initiator proteins). However, many large DNA viruses encode also several proteins involved in the elongation step of DNA replication." https://lnkd.in/dNTbYMw View in LinkedIn

VIRAL FOSSIL RECORD IS DNA. "The genomes of many organism contain endogenous viral elements (EVEs). These DNA sequences are the remnants of ancient virus genes and genomes that ancestrally 'invaded' the host germline. For example, the genomes of most vertebrate species contain hundreds to thousands of sequences derived from ancient retroviruses." https://lnkd.in/dPyAFVt View in LinkedIn