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ADVANTAGE OF DEATH. "Through a radical change in perspective, we have now seen that the emergence of programmed cell death can be envisioned as resulting from a selective spreading advantage conferred by genetic modules regulating cell death and survival to the genomes able to express them." http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn

WOLBACHIA HOST WITHIN A HOST. "For instance, phage WO infects the obligate intracellular alpha-proteobacteria Wolbachia, which in turn infect an estimated 40% of the most speciose group of animals worldwide—arthropods (as well as filarial nematodes." (Phage WO is the name of a type of bacteriophage). https://lnkd.in/dG3vir9 View in LinkedIn

SINGLE CELLED ORIGINS. "Programmed cell death is an ancient and conserved feature in most, if not all, single-celled eukaryote organisms, and that programmed cell death emerged at the time - or prior to the time - of the emergence of the first eukaryotes." http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn

HOST WITHIN A HOST. "While all viruses are specific to one of the three domains of life, some bacteriophages target obligate intracellular bacteria of eukaryotic cells." https://lnkd.in/dG3vir9 View in LinkedIn

ESCAPING EXTERNAL CONTROL. "Interestingly, the finding that a cell suicide program is operational in several unicellular eukaryote lineages explored to date support the seemingly paradoxical view that genetic mutations that would allow cells to escape environmental regulation of their suicide machinery may have become counterselected at the level of the colonies of these single-celled eukaryotes." http://www.nature.com/cdd/journal/v9/n4/full/4400950a.html View in LinkedIn

UNUSUAL THREESOME. "The tripartite arthropod-Wolbachia-phage WO system is emerging as a model to study the role of mobile elements in obligate intracellular bacteria." https://lnkd.in/dG3vir9 View in LinkedIn

HOST SWITCHING INCREASES GENE SHARING. "As a consequence of reductive evolution, mobile DNA elements have often been shown to be rare or absent from such streamlined bacteria. However, genome sequence data shows that mobile elements are present at sometimes high frequency in obligate intracellular bacteria that switch hosts, including Wolbachia, Rickettsia, Coxiella, and Phytoplasma." https://lnkd.in/dYh3-r4 View in LinkedIn

EVOLUTIONARY DOWNSIZING. "The restrictive lifestyle of obligate intracellular bacteria can lead to a near minimal genome state that encodes only essential functions. This reduction is associated with a genome-wide deletion bias, population bottlenecks, and relaxed selection due to the ability of the bacteria to acquire nutrients from the host cell rather than synthesize them." https://lnkd.in/dYh3-r4 View in LinkedIn

HIGH RATES OF GENE EXCHANGE. "Here, we discuss how studies on the temperate bacteriophage WO of Wolbachia have revealed unexpected levels of genomic flux and are challenging previously held views about the clonality of obligate intracellular bacteria." https://lnkd.in/dYh3-r4 View in LinkedIn

HIGH LATERAL TRANSFER. "The discovery of an extraordinarily high level of mobile elements in the genome of Wolbachia, a widespread arthropod and nematode endosymbiont, suggests that this bacterium could be an excellent model for assessing the evolution and function of mobile DNA in specialized bacteria." https://lnkd.in/dYh3-r4 View in LinkedIn