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MASSIVE AND MESSY ORIGIN. “The evidence that TEs shape eukaryotic genomes is by now incontrovertible. My thesis, then, is that TEs and the transposases they encode underlie the evolvability of higher eukaryotes' massive, messy genomes.” http://science.sciencemag.org/content/338/6108/758 View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE continues from last weekend and concludes on the fascinating theme of jumping genes. They push the boundaries of what constitutes a living beastie. Their contribution to life on this planet has been enormous. But, as always, we have just scratched the surface of this story. View in LinkedIn

NEW VIEW. “I contend that it is precisely the elaboration of epigenetic mechanisms from their prokaryotic origins as suppressors of genetic exchanges that underlies both the genome expansion and the proliferation of TEs characteristic of higher eukaryotes. This is the inverse of the prevailing view that epigenetic mechanisms evolved to control the disruptive potential of TEs.” http://science.sciencemag.org/content/338/6108/758 View in LinkedIn

IMMORTAL GENES. “Birth and death is one of the characteristics of living thing, DNA appeared in the living and it is not having birth point to have death point. So, DNA is non-living because it never dies.” https://lnkd.in/dMinrW7 View in LinkedIn

DRIVER OF NEW SPECIES. “It has long been hypothesized that TEs could drive host diversification, reinforce population divergence, and promote reproductive isolation (for instance through processes akin to hybrid dysgenesis), ultimately leading to speciation.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959437X17301685 View in LinkedIn

VIRAL IMPACT ON EVOLUTION. “Recent large-scale analyses suggest that HTT is pervasive in plants and animals and instrumental to the long-term evolutionary persistence of most types of TE.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959437X17301685 View in LinkedIn

TOO MUCH JARGON. The key for the remainder of today’s posts. (ERV= Endogenous retroviruses); (TE = transposable elements, jumping genes); (HT = horizontal transfer); (HTT = horizontal transfer of TEs). View in LinkedIn

FOREIGN GENE CONTRIBUTION. “In insects for example, it was estimated that ∼2% of the nuclear genome on average (and up to 24%) derives from horizontally-transferred TEs, a figure that likely remains a gross underestimate. The picture is similar in bats where at least 6% of the Myotis lucifugus genome derives from horizontally-acquired Helitrons.” (TE = transposable elements, jumping genes). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959437X17301685 View in LinkedIn

INFORMATION IS PHYSICAL. “A key aspect of information theory is that information cannot exist in a vacuum; that is, information is physical. This statement implies that information must have an instantiation (be it ink on paper, bits in a computer's memory, or even the neurons in a brain). Furthermore, it also implies that information must be about something. Lines on a piece of paper, for example, are not inherently information until it is discovered that they correspond to something, such as (in the case of a map) to the relative location of local streets and buildings.” http://www.pnas.org/content/97/9/4463.full View in LinkedIn

COMPELLED COMPLEXITY. “We show that, because natural selection forces genomes to behave as a natural “Maxwell Demon,” within a fixed environment, genomic complexity is forced to increase.” http://www.pnas.org/content/97/9/4463.full View in LinkedIn