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PAST BIASES. "Patterns of viral genetic variation will also be affected by selection acting on viral phenotypes. Although viruses can differ with respect to many phenotypes, phylodynamic studies have to date tended to focus on a limited number of viral phenotypes." https://lnkd.in/dDjCWve View in LinkedIn

DEAR READERS, your readership of my posts proves that you have an appetite for deeply technical subjects that are not dumbed-down, in a world of sound-bites and diluted science. This has been a test balloon to see how far you will go, and has surpassed my greatest expectations. This is a high-flying biological-themed journal club. Thank you all, as I love doing this!! View in LinkedIn

ULTRA-QUICK GENERATION TIMES. "Many viruses, especially RNA viruses, rapidly accumulate genetic variation because of short generation times and high mutation rates. Patterns of viral genetic variation are therefore heavily influenced by how quickly transmission occurs and by which entities transmit to one another." https://lnkd.in/dDjCWve View in LinkedIn

NOVEL REGULATORY MECHANISMS. "Recent studies, in many cases using quantitative trait loci (QTL)-mapping approaches in cell lines or tissue samples, have provided us with considerable insight into the properties of genetic loci that have regulatory roles. Such studies have uncovered novel biochemical regulatory interactions and led to the identification of previously unrecognized regulatory mechanisms." https://lnkd.in/dFv6Tsi View in LinkedIn

MILLION TIMES EVOLUTION. "Viruses are arguably the fastest-evolving biological entity on this planet. Many of them evolve at a rate in the order of 10(−3) substitutions per site per year (s/n/y). This is approximately a million times faster than the rates of evolution of cellular host organisms, typically around 10(−9) s/n/y.” No mean achievement. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0042682215000549 View in LinkedIn

EARLY DAYS. "We still have a limited ability to interpret how genetic variants alter gene regulation. We do not know how to “read the genome” and predict gene regulatory outputs. Our understanding of regulatory mechanisms and biochemical interactions has not yet matured into an ability to “read the code” and fully model transcriptional regulation." https://lnkd.in/dFv6Tsi View in LinkedIn

REGULATORY VARIATION. "TE-derived regulatory sequences may be particularly prone to contribute to regulatory differences among species that lead to lineage-specific phenotypes." (TE = transposable elements; miRNA = microRNA). http://www.genetics.org/content/176/2/1323 View in LinkedIn

ACCIDENTAL ROLE. "Later, these regulatory mechanisms could have been co-opted to exert controlling effects over thousands of host genes as is the case for miRNAs. The evolution of such complex gene regulatory systems can be considered nonadaptive in the sense that they did not evolve by virtue of selection for the role that they play now." (TE = transposable elements; miRNA = microRNA). http://www.genetics.org/content/176/2/1323 View in LinkedIn

DEFENSE MECHANISM. "siRNAs are also thought to have evolved as a defense mechanism against TEs, and the results reported here and elsewhere indicate that miRNAs can emerge from TEs as well." (TE = transposable elements; miRNA = microRNA; siRNA = small interfering RNAs). http://www.genetics.org/content/176/2/1323 View in LinkedIn

JUMPING GENES FROM MICRO-RNA. Transposable element (jumping genes) are “an important origin source of human miRNAs. MiRNAs can be brought into genomes during the insertion of TEs or generated by TE sequences via particular mechanisms in current genome." (TE = transposable elements; miRNA = microRNA). https://lnkd.in/d_68WC9 View in LinkedIn