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HAND BEHIND THE WHEEL. “Patrick Forterre of the University of Paris-Sud has also analyzed enzymes responsible for DNA replication and has concluded that the genes for such enzymes in eukaryotes probably have a viral origin.” https://lnkd.in/gVBURjk View in LinkedIn

RADICAL PROPOSAL. “Viruses may originate genes, then colonize two different lineages—for example, bacteria and vertebrates. A gene apparently bestowed on humanity by bacteria may have been given to both by a virus.” https://lnkd.in/gVBURjk View in LinkedIn

FORGET SPECIES. “Quasispecies theory has encouraged viewing and examining viruses as complex mutant spectra, and not merely as simple genetic entities that can be described with a defined nucleotide sequence, as believed only a few decades ago.” https://lnkd.in/gDaeFeM View in LinkedIn

SUPERORGANISM. “A realization of recent years is that mutant swarms are not mere collections of mutants ranked by a mutation-selection balance that act independently of each other. Rather, very often the mutant ensemble acts as a unit of selection due to interactions among its members. The result of these interactions is that evolution operates at the level of the population, a process often called ‘group selection”.” https://lnkd.in/gDaeFeM View in LinkedIn

NUMEROUS FOCI. “Mutant swarms are established within single infected cells and cell clusters and in infected organisms during disease episodes, outbreaks, epidemics and pandemics.” https://lnkd.in/gDaeFeM View in LinkedIn

GIANT POPULATIONS. "An important aspect of the quasispecies concept is that the large size of virus populations enables positive and negative interactions between individual viruses to establish a quasi-equilibrium of the variant proportions. Genetic variation is generated by the accumulation of mutations during replication and their re-arrangement by genetic recombination, and genome segment reassortment in the case of segmented genomes." https://lnkd.in/dC3CR5F View in LinkedIn

BRANCH IN THE TREE. "I propose that drastic sex chromosome changes could have played a direct role in separating our lineage (placental mammals), first from the egg-laying monotremes, then from marsupials." https://lnkd.in/ehjz378 View in LinkedIn

FIRST AND SECOND MAJOR UPHEAVAL. "The first corresponded to the divergence of monotreme mammals (platypus and echidna) from the rest, and the second to the divergence of marsupials from placental mammals (including humans)." https://lnkd.in/ehjz378 View in LinkedIn

MAJOR UPHEAVALS. "Comparisons of the sex chromosomes of the three major mammal groups show that there were two upheavals of sex chromosomes during mammal evolution." https://lnkd.in/ehjz378 View in LinkedIn

A TYPE OF FREEDOM. "The evolution of separate sexes from an initially co-sexual state might be expected to provoke evolutionary changes, as each sex adapts to the release of constraints imposed by the other sex function." https://lnkd.in/exrSaeb View in LinkedIn