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HOT SPOT. "Dense microbial communities, such as the human gut microbiota are now considered a hot spot of microbial gene transfer. This is all the more interesting since it was recently discovered that the rate of HGT is apparently eight to nine orders of magnitude faster than previously thought." (HGT = horizontal gene transfer). https://lnkd.in/e5FE9cJ View in LinkedIn

GIANT VIRUSES. "Much like bacteria, the giant viruses (sometimes called giruses) possess their own parasites and their own mobilomes, i.e. communities of associated mobile genetic elements." http://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1743-422X-10-158 View in LinkedIn

TROJAN HORSES. "Viruses have insinuated themselves into the genome of our ancestors for hundreds of millions of years. They typically have gotten there by infecting eggs or sperm, inserting their own DNA into ours. There are 100,000 known fragments of viruses in the human genome, making up over 8% of our DNA." https://lnkd.in/eFhFQjd View in LinkedIn

COMPLEX NETWORK. "Virophages, polintons, and transpovirons: a complex evolutionary network of diverse selfish genetic elements with different reproduction strategies. Recent advances of genomics and metagenomics reveal remarkable diversity of viruses and other selfish genetic elements." https://lnkd.in/eEUzxrC View in LinkedIn

MEMORY TRANSFER. Train a little Platyhelminthes to learn a trick. Grind it up and feed it to naive worms. And you get an uptick in the rate at which the worms learn the trick. Roasted professor anyone? Not an untarnished story. https://lnkd.in/esKEPF7 View in LinkedIn

POLINTONS "were only proposed in 2005, but since then we understand them a bit better. These mobile genetic elements further expand the growing family of jumping genes." https://lnkd.in/eEM2HAP View in LinkedIn

WE ARE WHAT WE EAT? There is growing evidence that the human gut microbiota is very actively importing genes from our food. Previously an unthinkable proposition, this hypothesis is gathering support. And what of the exchange between our microbiota and our own cells? View in LinkedIn

Moonshot View in LinkedIn

BIOINFORMATICS POWER. "Metagenomic sequences are a treasure trove of novel genes and genomes. The rapidly growing metagenomic databases provide increasing opportunities for computational discovery of new groups of organisms. Identification of new viruses is particularly straightforward given the comparatively small size of viral genomes, although fast evolution of viruses complicates the analysis of novel sequences." https://lnkd.in/erZCmAF View in LinkedIn

THE MISSING LINK. "The line between viruses and parasitic elements of the genome is thin and delicate, and probably often crossed. Parasitic elements that acquire the means to escape the host cell become viruses and, conversely, viruses can lose this ability and return to a more limited lifestyle as transposable elements (TEs)." https://lnkd.in/eGu7jnP View in LinkedIn