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FIRST FUNCTIONS. "We looked back into the very onset of the protein evolution with a goal to find elementary functions (EFs) that came from the prebiotic world and served as building blocks of the first enzymes. We defined the basic structural and functional units of biochemical reactions—elementary functional loops." https://lnkd.in/dwbv2VX View in LinkedIn

MOBILE GENETIC ELEMENTS. "Endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) are abundant in mammalian genomes and contain sequences modulating transcription. The impact of ERV propagation on the evolution of gene regulation remains poorly understood. We found that ERVs have shaped the evolution of a transcriptional network underlying the interferon (IFN) response, a major branch of innate immunity, and that lineage-specific ERVs have dispersed numerous IFN-inducible enhancers independently in diverse mammalian genomes." https://lnkd.in/dn8M8m8 View in LinkedIn

EXAPTATION. "Some pseudogenes have been co-opted for organism-level function." http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004351 View in LinkedIn

BROKEN GENES. "Other historical markers can be found in our genes. We have a gene to make Vitamin C but, unfortunately for those sailors who died from scurvy, it is broken, so we have to get Vitamin C from our food. Chimpanzees and orangutans have the same broken gene, which can only have been inherited from our common ancestor for whom it was functional, as it still is for many animals." https://lnkd.in/d8JdtZG View in LinkedIn

PSEUDOGENES. "The human genome is also home to a large number of pseudogenes. Estimates of the total number range from 12,600 to 19,700." http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004351 View in LinkedIn

EXAPTATION. "Notably, the processes of subfunctionalization and neofunctionalization may not be mutually exclusive. Indeed, the degenerative processes leading to subfunctionalization may act upon silencer elements and thereby promote neofunctionalization." https://lnkd.in/eHCDVhZ View in LinkedIn

DEVELOPMENTAL MOSAICS. "Development then becomes a matter of interspecies communication. We are not individuals from the viewpoint of developmental biology."​ https://lnkd.in/ddVyNR5 View in LinkedIn

OUTSOURCED SIGNALS. "​In the developing guts of mice and zebrafish, hundreds of genes are activated by bacterial symbionts. The coevolution of mammals and their gut bacteria has in effect resulted in the “outsourcing” of developmental signals from animal cells to microbial symbionts."​ https://lnkd.in/ddVyNR5 View in LinkedIn

FISH GUT TRIGGERS. "​In zebrafish, microbes regulate (through the canonical Wnt pathway) the normal proliferation of the intestinal stem cells. Without these microbes, the intestinal epithelium has fewer cells, and it lacks goblet cells, entroendocrine cells, and the characteristic intestinal brush border enzymes."​ https://lnkd.in/ddVyNR5 View in LinkedIn

GROUP SELECTION. "Symbionts can therefore provide selectable allelic variation such that the entire group—the holobiont—is the selectable entity rather than either host or symbiont alone. Thus, microbes provide a second hereditary system that enables holobiont survival and selection."​ https://lnkd.in/ddVyNR5 View in LinkedIn