Month: September 2022

PLASMID EVOLUTION. "It has recently become clear that through small genetic changes such as single point mutations, both types of plasmid could drastically improve their ability to stably replicate in strains wherein they used to be lost easily." https://lnkd.in/e7i6Qm3 View in LinkedIn

THE GOOD AND THE BAD. "Plasmids can evolve to expand or at least shift their host range, which is undesirable for public health in the case of drug resistance or virulence plasmids." http://people.ibest.uidaho.edu/~etop/vgp/notes/terms/bhr.html View in LinkedIn

"EPISTASIS is a phenomenon that consists of the effect of one gene being dependent on the presence of one or more 'modifier genes' (genetic background). Similarly, epistatic mutations have different effects in combination than individually. Epistasis has a large influence on the shape of evolutionary landscapes which leads to profound consequences for evolution and evolvability of traits." https://lnkd.in/eSHwQcF View in LinkedIn

INTERACTIVE EVOLUTION. "During relatively long stretches of evolutionary time, the genes on the chromosome and the plasmid interacted epistatically, highlighting another way these genetic elements may affect each other’s evolution." https://lnkd.in/exyreqd View in LinkedIn

PROMISCUOUS DNA. "The mitochondrial genomes of flowering plants experience frequent insertions of foreign sequences, including linear plasmids that also exist in stand-alone forms within mitochondria. An important feature of many plant mitochondrial genomes is their propensity to acquire foreign or “promiscuous DNA, which comes from diverse sources including the nucleus, plastids, bacteria, viruses, and mitochondria from other plant species." https://lnkd.in/edGrATm View in LinkedIn

"GENETIC PROMISCUITY is far more prevalent in nature than we realised." https://lnkd.in/eV52WTB View in LinkedIn

INHERITANCE. "A fundamental concept in biology is that heritable material, DNA, is passed from parent to offspring, a process called vertical gene transfer. An alternative mechanism of gene acquisition is through horizontal gene transfer (HGT), which involves movement of genetic material between different species." https://lnkd.in/e5G7Nk8 View in LinkedIn

NO IMMUTABLE SPECIES. "As far as DNA is concerned, however, the supposed walls between species are not nearly so impermeable. Up in the branches of the great tree of life, we are no longer immersed in the ancient communal pool that watered its tangled roots. Yet we cannot escape the winds of promiscuity. Even today – as was true from the start – ‘our’ genes are not ours alone." https://aeon.co/essays/genes-that-jump-species-does-this-shake-the-tree-of-life View in LinkedIn

HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL. "According to textbook theories of evolution, the major route of genes moving between organisms is parent to child – whether through sex or asexual cloning – not this sneaky business of escorting genes between unrelated organisms. We must now acknowledge that, even among the most complex organisms, vertical is not the only direction in which genes travel." https://aeon.co/essays/genes-that-jump-species-does-this-shake-the-tree-of-life View in LinkedIn

RADICAL CONSEQUENCES. "What scientists have seen is just a little tip of an immense iceberg,’ says Antonio Teixeira, a biologist at the University of Brasilia. W Ford Doolittle, a biochemist at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, agrees: horizontal gene transfer, he wrote recently ‘is far more pervasive and more radical in its consequences than we could have guessed just a decade ago’." https://aeon.co/essays/genes-that-jump-species-does-this-shake-the-tree-of-life View in LinkedIn