Category: Uncategorized

TOTAL BLANK. “The history of evolutionary biology is essentially devoid of considering the consequences of viruses, especially those that persist and colonize.” https://lnkd.in/guhpmyR View in LinkedIn

CHANGING PERSPECTIVES. “First seen as poisons, then as life-forms, then biological chemicals, viruses today are thought of as being in a gray area between living and nonliving.” https://lnkd.in/gVBURjk View in LinkedIn

VIRUSES are pieces of genetic code in a chainmail protein coat that can be crystallized and wait dormant for centuries for the right moment to animate. They are the most outsourced and streamlined creatures on the planet, also the most numerous and the most diverse. Contrary to the popular imagination, the majority are benign and live in collaborative symbiosis with numerous hosts including man. The influenza pandemic of 1918, smallpox, yellow fever, herpes, rabies, polio, smallpox, rotavirus, and HIV are headline viruses, but the majority of viruses are neither famous nor harmful. View in LinkedIn

VIRAL PRIMER 101. The tiny replicons outsource the messy stuff that need complex machinery to their hosts, allowing viruses to be excessively streamlined and flexible. This flexibility gave some of the fastest reproductive cycles and greatest diversity on the planet. This deceptive simplicity has led many observers to believe that viruses are indeed simple, and many believe that they are actually non-living. Nasus non videatur in facie tua. https://lnkd.in/gR97A9s View in LinkedIn

VIRAL UNIVERSE. “There are an estimated 10(31) viruses on Earth. That is to say: there may be a hundred million times more viruses on Earth than there are stars in the universe.” https://lnkd.in/dzmPw57 View in LinkedIn

THE CAPE FLORISTIC REGION. “We show that >40% of the current total of species was described within the first 100 years of exploration, followed by a continued steady rate of description. We propose that

ONE HOUSE TO TWO HOUSES. “As had been demonstrated earlier in maize, fixation of a null mutation at one locus in a monecious population set the stage for segregation of a null mutation at a second locus, resulting in dioecy and single-gene sex determination.” https://lnkd.in/gKA5C8N View in LinkedIn

TWO HOUSES. “Roughly 6% of all angiosperms are dioecious but the genes controlling sex determination and their organization on sex chromosomes in diecious plants are largely unknown.” https://lnkd.in/gKA5C8N View in LinkedIn

SEX CHANGE. “How asparagus recently changed its lifestyle from hermaphroditism to distinct males and females.” https://lnkd.in/gKA5C8N View in LinkedIn

A CASE STUDY of complex sex gene evolution in the garden asparagus. This lovely study illustrates the subtlety and complexity of sex gene evolution in a vegetable well known to most of us. I hope that you will never again see the humble asparagus in the same light, but rather marvel at the ingenuity in common creatures. https://lnkd.in/gKA5C8N View in LinkedIn