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THE NEXT SECTION deals with some extraordinary findings and insights in the viral world outlined in a second very important article, and is a bookend for the previous blockbuster. Really exciting stuff. View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this extensive citation of a very important article on biological dark matter and the new emerging biological paradigm. This viewpoint is far from mainstream because it takes time for new ideas to overcome resistance, to become accepted and to trickle into mainstream thinking. However, this is an extremely important start. https://standardsingenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40793-016-0180-8 View in LinkedIn

PARADIGM REVISION. “The unveiling of biological dark matter is allowing us to see, for the first time, the diversity of the entire biosphere and, to paraphrase Darwin, is providing a new view of life. Advancing and understanding that view will require major revisions to some of the most fundamental concepts and theories in biology.” https://standardsingenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40793-016-0180-8 View in LinkedIn

IMPORTANCE OF SCALE. “In biology, as in physics, macroscale-level properties (i.e., those of classical biology) do not apply at the level of the micro-scale (i.e., biological dark matter). The newly emerging biosphere of microbial dark matter cannot be made tractable to research or understood merely by extending the concepts and methods of eukaryotic macrobiology. By analogy, that would prove about as useful as attempting to understand quantum mechanics through the application of Newtonian mechanics to miniature billiard balls.” https://standardsingenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40793-016-0180-8 View in LinkedIn

EXTRATERRESTIAL. “Viruses can’t metabolize (break down) food to release energy (carry out respiration) or grow. The only thing that viruses can do is replicate (copy themselves), but to do that they need the help of a living cell.” Extreme outsourcing and streamlining. https://lnkd.in/eFcy85g View in LinkedIn

DEEPLY INTERCONNECTED. “Most importantly, we know that every individual of the multi-cellular eukaryote biosphere is completely covered and infused with prokaryotic life and that these associated microbiomes have significant effects on the function and fitness of their multi-cellular eukaryote hosts.” https://standardsingenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40793-016-0180-8 View in LinkedIn

BORDERLINE. “Viruses have no chemical processes of their own.” https://lnkd.in/eHNQAPJ View in LinkedIn

TWO WORLDS. “We now know that about half of the world’s biomass and by far the majority of its genetic biodiversity actually occur as prokaryotic microbial communities. We also know that the visible biosphere of multi-cellular eukaryote macrobiological life represents a highly derived and constrained subset of life on Earth.” https://standardsingenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40793-016-0180-8 View in LinkedIn

NO NAMES. Viruses are not given Latin names like other living organisms (polio virus, rabies virus), except that Virus is Latin for poison. https://lnkd.in/eqw9nkU View in LinkedIn

NEW WORLD VIEW. “New insights from molecular analysis are forcing a recognition that there are, in fact, no completely objective individuals, no unique lineages, and no one true tree, at least in the quantum realm of prokaryotic dark matter,” and no fundamental gene units, no gene beads, and no gene strings. https://standardsingenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40793-016-0180-8 View in LinkedIn