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THE RACE FOR SPEED. "Did a high mutation rate emerge as a side effect of selection for faster replication? Biochemical assays of HIV-1 mutants resistant to nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors suggest that this might be the case" in RNA viruses. https://lnkd.in/e9KGgbm View in LinkedIn

BIOSPHERE PROCESSING SPEEDS. "Given conservative estimates regarding DNA transcription rates, this information content suggests biosphere processing speeds exceeding yottaNOPS values 10(24)." (NOPS: Nucleotide Operations Per Second). https://lnkd.in/ewABXeK View in LinkedIn

NET EFFECT BALANCE. "Implicitly, the paradigm that high mutation rates allow for fast adaptation is based on the assumption that, with considerable frequency, the effect of beneficial mutations is strong enough to overcome the burden imposed by deleterious mutations, hence allowing for the hitchhiking of mutator strains with beneficial mutations." (RNA viruses). https://lnkd.in/e9KGgbm View in LinkedIn

TIME FROM DNA TO PROTEIN. "The average human gene is about 28,000 bases long, with only about 5% of it encoding for protein, which on an average is about 450 amino acids long. The major steps that take some time are: Transcription [DNA → pre-mRNA]: ~20min; Splicing [pre-mRNA → mature mRNA]: 5-10min; Transport [mRNA from nucleus to cytoplasm]: 10-30min; Translation [mRNA → Protein]: 90sec." https://lnkd.in/e2Z6svw View in LinkedIn

SELECTIVE PRESSURE. "The mutation rate itself is a trait that can evolve by natural selection, provided the existence of genetic variation for the character." https://lnkd.in/e9KGgbm View in LinkedIn

TOTAL PLANETARY DNA TRANSCRIPTION. "A typical speed of DNA transcription is 18–42 bases per second for RNA polymerase II to travel along chromatin templates and elsewhere suggested as 100 bases per second. Precisely how much of the DNA on Earth is being transcribed at any one time is unknown." https://lnkd.in/ewABXeK View in LinkedIn

SELF-INJURY IN FASTER REPRODUCTION. "The argument that the more mutations are generated, the faster adaptation proceeds is flawed because it ignores the fact that the vast majority of mutations are deleterious, hence hindering adaptation" in RNA virus populations. https://lnkd.in/e9KGgbm View in LinkedIn

PLANETARY DNA INFORMATION. "The Computational Power of the Biosphere...allows us to estimate a lower bound on the total information content in the biosphere: 5.3 × 10(31) (±3.6 × 10(31)) megabases (Mb) of DNA." (53 nonillion: a cardinal number represented in the U.S. by 1 followed by 30 zeros, and in Great Britain by 1 followed by 54 zeros). https://lnkd.in/ewABXeK View in LinkedIn

MUTANT SWARMS. "It is an unquestionable fact that RNA virus populations exist as swarms of mutant genotypes. Such enormous variability is an unavoidable consequence of the lack of exonuclease proofreading activity of the virus-encoded RNA polymerases with, in some cases, the added contribution of recombination." https://lnkd.in/e9KGgbm View in LinkedIn

DNA IN BIOMASS. "The DNA is incorporated within approximately 2 × 10(12) tonnes of biomass and approximately 5 × 10(30) living cells, the latter dominated by prokaryotes." https://lnkd.in/ewABXeK View in LinkedIn