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VIRAL PRIMER, or everything that you wanted to know about viruses. https://lnkd.in/ewwHdGy View in LinkedIn

"VIRUS. A molecular genetic parasite that uses cellular systems for its own replication." https://lnkd.in/eWJm4qh View in LinkedIn

DECISIVE ROLE. "For far too long, viruses have only been considered as poisonous and highly infectious parasites. The fact that viruses are silent companions of virtually all organisms and that they play a decisive role in the evolution of the host has been largely ignored." https://lnkd.in/e-pJFM6 View in LinkedIn

SPECIALIZED LIFESTYLE. "Intracellular bacteria commonly have a reduced genome size, as a consequence of their nutritional dependence on, and adaptation to their host environment and specialization." https://lnkd.in/ebgdSj3 View in LinkedIn

VIRUSES HAVE BEEN SMEARED."New technologies have changed our understanding of viruses throughout the last ten years. Viruses are not primarily pathogens, which is a biased view based on the history of medicine. Most viruses do not cause diseases. Viruses cause diseases if a well-established equilibrium, which evolved over billions of years, gets out of balance." https://lnkd.in/eGaw2Kq View in LinkedIn

OBLIGATE PARASITES. "It has been well known for decades that the evolution of numerous parasitic and symbiotic organisms entails simplification rather than complexification. In particular, bacteria that evolve from free-living forms to obligate intracellular parasites can lose up to 95% of their gene repertoires without compromising the ancestral set of highly conserved genes involved in core cellular function." https://lnkd.in/egqWFZp View in LinkedIn

MICROBIOME INITIATIVE. View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE continues on the second weekend of reductive evolution. Examples of genetic streamlining are numerous. Reductive evolution is considered to be the dominant force in evolution, interspersed by periods of explosive complexification, when new species emerge. It runs against the long-held assumption that increasing genetic complexity is the inevitable and singular driver in living things. View in LinkedIn

UNDER ONE PERCENT. There are millions of types of viruses but only about 5,000 have been described in detail. This is less than a small fraction of 1% of the total. We are living in the viral dark ages in terms of our knowledge. https://lnkd.in/eihaD8M View in LinkedIn

WM STANLEY. "Needless to say, for a time there was great skepticism that the crystalline material could be tobacco mosaic, due chiefly to the old idea that viruses were living organisms. A wide variety of experimental approaches has been used to test the proposal that the crystalline ma-" "terial represented tobacco mosaic virus. It was found that essentially all of the virus activity present in infectious juice could be isolated in the form of the crystalline material. The virus activity of this material was about 500 times that of the starting material." (Nobel Lecture, December 12, 1946). https://lnkd.in/eRJ7Biu View in LinkedIn