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PARADOXICAL POISON AND ANTIDOTE. "In prokaryotes, conjugative plasmids often encode for the simultaneous production of long-lived toxins and short-lived antitoxins. When these are present together, the toxin is harmless to the host. However, if one daughter cell is cured of the plasmid, it will inherit toxic cytoplasm without a source of antitoxin and will die. While this is easily explained as a ‘selfish’ adaptation on the part of the plasmid, chromosomally-encoded toxin-antitoxin systems probably do not function in gene-level competition." https://www.linkedin.com/redir/general-malware-page?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2eesciencecentral%2eorg%2Fjournals%2Fare-internal-death-promoting-mechanisms-ever-adaptive-2329-9002%2e1000113%2epdf View in LinkedIn

SELFISH MOBILE GENETIC ELEMENTS. "In some cases, this peculiar form of selection may explain the function and evolution of genes for unicell POD. When a cell has low chances for reproduction, POD and the transfer of genes from the dying cell to a new host can save the genes. This process may be associated with occurrence of new mutations in the transferred genes and their improved ability to survive in the new host." (POD = programmed organismal death). View in LinkedIn

GREY ZONE CREATURES. "In eukaryotes as well, the distinction between unicellular and multicellular is not always completely clear. For example, the social amoeba, Dictyostelium discoidium, is unicellular during part of its life cycle, but upon starvation, cells aggregate and develop into a multicellular motile slug, then fruiting body. Stalk cell death is programmed and is characterized by some classic features of POD." (POD = programmed organismal death). View in LinkedIn

DEATH GLUE. "Recent studies have revealed that the regulated death of bacterial cells is important for biofilm development. Following cell death, a sub-population of the dead bacteria lyse and release genomic DNA, which then has an essential role in intercellular adhesion and biofilm stability." https://lnkd.in/dm2ekKx View in LinkedIn

BIOFILMS. "Some groups of bacterial cells are functionally organized. In lamentous cyanobacteria such as Calothrix and Trichodesmium, poor conditions induce POD in some cells. Because the lament often breaks up as a result, the function of POD in this system could be filament dispersal in response to unfavorable environmental conditions." (POD = programmed organismal death). View in LinkedIn

MORTALITY BREEDS COMPLEXITY. "We take note of the fact that mortal organisms endowed with programmed self-decomposition are more complex than immortal organisms in both structural and functional aspects, and that the former can better increase the prosperity of their offspring than the latter can." http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.657.723&rep=rep1&type=pdf View in LinkedIn

EYE OF NEWT AND TOE OF FROG. "By sequencing full genomes from purified bacteriophage WO particles of Wolbachia, we discover a novel eukaryotic association module with various animal proteins domains, such as the black widow latrotoxin-CTD, that are uninterrupted in intact bacteriophage genomes, enriched with eukaryotic protease cleavage sites, and combined with additional domains to forge some of the largest bacteriophage genes (up to 14,256 bp)." (Macbeth Act IV Scene I). https://lnkd.in/dYh3-r4 View in LinkedIn

MORTALS, IMMORTALS AND MUTANTS. "Our findings suggest that, in the case of a mortal organism appearing among a population of immortal organisms as a mutant which evolutionarily acquires a genetic program for death by means of self-decomposition, this organism and its surviving offspring surpass immortal organisms and eventually prosper with adaptive divergence under various environmental conditions within a certain probability." http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.657.723&rep=rep1&type=pdf View in LinkedIn

MODEL OF AUTONOMOUS DEATH. "We formed the hypothesis that originally immortal terrestrial organisms evolve into ones that are programmed for autonomous death. We then conducted simulation experiments in which we examined this hypothesis using an artificial ecosystem that we designed to refer to a terrestrial ecosystem endowed with Artificial Chemistry." https://lnkd.in/dtsPf9E View in LinkedIn

MISSING REFERENCE FOR TODAY. " "Are Internal, Death-Promoting Mechanisms Ever Adaptive?" "John W Pepper, Deborah E Shelton, Armin Rashidi and Pierre M Durand View in LinkedIn