Month: September 2022

NO COMMON ROOT. "Comparative genomics provides no evidence of a monophyletic origin of all viruses. Many virus groups simply share no common genes, effectively, ruling out any conventional notion of common origin. When applied to viruses, the notion of "common genes" is not a simple one because commonality is not necessarily limited to clear-cut orthologous relationships between genes that translate into highly significant sequence similarity." https://lnkd.in/dHhQ6QH View in LinkedIn

INCOMPARABLY MORE EXTENSIVE. "All these lines of evidence and reasoning suggest that the principal classes of prokaryotic viruses, including positive-strand RNA viruses, retroid elements, and several groups of DNA viruses, emerged within the primordial genetic pool where mixing and matching of diverse genetic elements was incomparably more extensive than it is in any modern biological community." https://lnkd.in/dHhQ6QH View in LinkedIn

COOPERATIVE STRATEGY. "Viruses can co-operate, that is they interact to build groups that invade host genomes and even compete as a group for limited resources such as host genomes. This leads to an extraordinary effective result and a key behavioral motif that is able to integrate a persistent lifestyle into cellular host organisms, the ‘‘addiction’’ modules: former competing viral groups are counterbalancing each other together with the host immune system." https://lnkd.in/eWydwab View in LinkedIn

VIRAL ADDICTION MODULES. "Although rather stable under certain circumstances, this addiction balance can also get out of balance which means the competing viral features may become virulent again. But when stable, we can find such counter-regulating paired genes of the addiction modules, as in the RM (restriction/modulation) systems as well as in TA (toxin/antitoxin) systems." https://lnkd.in/eWydwab View in LinkedIn

NOVEL STRATEGY. "This ‘infectious’ colonization by new addiction modules is a main process in generating new sequence space without error-replication and therefore in the evolution, conservation and plasticity of genetic identities." https://lnkd.in/eWydwab View in LinkedIn

SURVIVAL ADVANTAGE. "Although viruses can clearly kill their host, they can also colonize their host without disease and thus sometimes protect the host from the same or similar virus. This new virus–host combination can thus provide an ‘antiviral’ survival advantage, especially in a virus-rich habitat. Since it is transmissible, such survival can also apply to groups that were virus colonized (not necessarily direct kin)." https://lnkd.in/eWydwab View in LinkedIn

"CUMULATIVE EVOLUTION at the level of nucleic acid codes (genetic code based on DNA or RNA) is not solely what remains out of natural selection processes of mutations (error replication). Cumulative evolution is more like a ‘‘ratchet effect’’, which as originally used was metaphor -- like means for the cultural transmission of learned experiences to the next generations." https://lnkd.in/eWydwab View in LinkedIn

SILENCING TRANSPOSONS. "We can consider how epigenetics might contribute to a cumulative evolution. Since it marks regions of DNA for non-expression, compared to unmarked regions, the expression patterns in subsequent generations can be affected thus show adaptation without genetic change. Interestingly, the origin of most all of these marking epigenetic systems appears to relate directly to the silencing and persistence of virus-like parasitic code." https://lnkd.in/eWydwab View in LinkedIn

ERROR DRIVEN EVOLUTION NARRATIVE. "High fidelity DNA synthesis is beneficial for maintaining genetic information over many generations and for avoiding mutations that can initiate and promote human diseases such as cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. Low fidelity DNA synthesis is beneficial for the evolution of species, for generating diversity leading to increased survival of viruses and microbes when subjected to changing environments, and for the development of a normal immune system." https://lnkd.in/dAV3ptS View in LinkedIn

EPIGENETIC SILENCING. "This marking allows the epigenetic inheritance of the differentiation in the variety of tissues of several organs throughout all known species during the timely regulated steps in developmental stages. Therefore, epigenetics is a rather intriguing example of how evolution, conservation, and plasticity of genetic identities are interlinked without the error-replication narrative, but related to genetic parasite colonization." https://lnkd.in/eWydwab View in LinkedIn