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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

VIRAL PERCEPTIONS. "For about 100 years, the scientific community has repeatedly changed its collective mind over what viruses are. First seen as poisons, then as life-forms, then biological chemicals, and today many scientists think of viruses as existing at the border between chemistry and life: a gray area between living and nonliving." https://lnkd.in/e7AX8A4 View in LinkedIn

CRYSTALLIZATION OF VIRUSES. "Recall that many serious biologists and chemists in those earlier years still adhered to the belief that some “vital” force outside the known laws of chemistry and physics would be needed to explain the phenomenon of life." The 1946 Nobel Prize was awarded to Wendel Stanley for crystallizing tobacco mosaic virus. https://lnkd.in/eqSfd3G View in LinkedIn

34,000-YO VIRUS RESURRECTED from permafrost. Frozen without special reagents and slow cooling. https://lnkd.in/ekHnSGM View in LinkedIn

CRYSTALLIZATION AND RECONSTITUTION of a seemingly living entity is absolutely confounding to most scientists. This is the domain of the chemistry lab, retorts and Bunsen burners, not the domain of wriggling, wet, and ingenious biology. Cryopreservation of animal cells is one thing, using special reagents to avoid ice crystal formation. Crystallization is quite another. View in LinkedIn

CELL PARTS LATER CRYSTALLIZED. "Molecular biologists went on to crystallize most of the essential components of cells and are today accustomed to thinking about cellular constituents—for example, ribosomes, mitochondria, membranes, DNA and proteins—as either chemical machinery or the stuff that the machinery uses or produces." https://lnkd.in/e3cWiQ8 View in LinkedIn

COMPLEX HOST-SWITCHING. "Since phytoplasmas are endocellular parasites that lack a cell wall, their membrane proteins and secreted proteins function directly in the host cell. One-third of the genes is affected during host switching between plant and insect, suggesting that the phytoplasma alters its gene expression in response to its host and may use transporters, membrane proteins, secreted proteins, and metabolic enzymes in a host-specific manner." https://lnkd.in/eEP5JyK View in LinkedIn