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"PHYTOPLASMAS are plant pathogenic bacteria associated with devastating damage to over 700 plant species worldwide. Phytoplasma genomes, however, encode even fewer metabolically functional proteins than do mycoplasma genomes, which were previously thought to have the minimum possible gene set." https://lnkd.in/eEP5JyK View in LinkedIn

MASS TRANSFER. "Hundreds of genes, in the case of the mitochondrion, and even thousands in the case of the chloroplast, were not lost but rather transferred from the endosymbiont genome to the nuclear genome of the host." https://lnkd.in/egqWFZp View in LinkedIn

BACTERIA-ANT SYMBIOSIS. "Blochmannia, obligate endosymbionts of ants of the tribe Camponotini, have coevolved with their ant hosts for ∼40 MY. Reconstructed gene content of the last common ancestor (LCA) of these six Blochmannia genomes is reduced (690 protein coding genes), consistent with rapid gene loss soon after establishment of the symbiosis....has affected cellular functions and metabolic pathways, including DNA replication and repair, vitamin biosynthesis and membrane proteins." https://lnkd.in/erNiBXs View in LinkedIn

MASSIVE JUMP IN EUKARYOTES. "The complexity of the emerging chimeric organism drastically increases, both at the genomic and at the phenotypic level, and it has been argued that such complexification would not have been attainable if not for the endosymbiosis." https://lnkd.in/egqWFZp View in LinkedIn

FROM SYMBIOSIS TO ORGANELLE. "Reductive evolution of endosymbionts can yield bacteria with tiny genomes consisting of 150–200 genes and lacking some essential genes such as those encoding several aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases, which is suggestive of an ongoing transition to an organelle state." A snapshot in real time of how mitochondria and chloroplasts evolved. https://lnkd.in/egqWFZp View in LinkedIn

BIG TICKET REDUCTIONS. "The mitochondria, the ubiquitous energy-transforming organelles of eukaryotes, and the chloroplasts, the organelles responsible for the eukaryotic photosynthesis, are the ultimate realizations of bacterial reductive evolution." Massive gene loses. https://lnkd.in/egqWFZp View in LinkedIn

ADVANTAGE. "Gene loss can provide a selective advantage by conserving an organism’s limiting resources, provided the gene’s function is dispensable." http://mbio.asm.org/content/3/2/e00036-12.short View in LinkedIn

EUKARYOTE GENES. "The reconstructions consistently indicate that ancestral eukaryotes including...the founders of each supergroup were intron-rich forms, with intron densities higher than those in the genes of most extant eukaryotes and probably only slightly lower than those in the modern organisms with the most complex gene structures, such as mammals." https://lnkd.in/egqWFZp View in LinkedIn

COMMON BACTERIAL REDUCTION. "Reductive genomic evolution, driven by genetic drift, is common in endosymbiotic bacteria." https://lnkd.in/e9TnyEE View in LinkedIn

SIMPLE IS THE NEW COMPLEX. "The interesting thing about these results is that they indicate that viruses must have diversified from ancient cells by a process called reductive evolution, where organisms simplify instead of becoming more complex." http://www.popsci.com/new-evidence-that-viruses-are-alive View in LinkedIn