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GENOME DOWNSIZING. "Evolutionary chromosome change involves significant variation in DNA amount in diploids and genome downsizing in polyploids." https://lnkd.in/dmkwGfy View in LinkedIn

RADICAL NEW VIEW. "Genome reduction as the dominant mode of evolution. A common belief is that evolution generally proceeds towards greater complexity at both the organismal and the genomic level, numerous examples of reductive evolution of parasites and symbionts notwithstanding. However, recent evolutionary reconstructions challenge this notion." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201300037/full View in LinkedIn

SIMPLICITY NOT SELECTED. "Most processes in eukaryotes generally evolve toward complexity, presumably because complexity provides more regulatory opportunities and perhaps also because there is no selective pressure to enforce simplicity." Not always true. https://lnkd.in/d8Qr_bk View in LinkedIn

MANTRA OF COMPLEXIFICATION. "The textbook depiction of the evolution of life on earth is that of an ascent toward a steadily increasing organismal complexity: from primitive protocells to prokaryotic cells to the eukaryotic cell to multicellular organisms to animals to humans, the crowning achievement of the entire history of life." https://lnkd.in/egqWFZp View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE. It is generally thought that evolution is the march towards greater structural and genetic complexity. Not quite so simple. Genetic outsourcing during genetic streamlining is deceptive. It actually increases genetic complexity, and amplifies gene capabilities by appropriation of host genes during the symbiotic or parasitic lifestyle, not just being genetic simplification or genome reduction. Remember the reversal of polyploidy during plant evolution? View in LinkedIn

NOT A SIMPLE CORRELATION. "The relationship between genomic complexity and the complexity at various levels of the phenotype, from molecular to organismal, is far from being straightforward as it has become clear already in the pre-genomic era." Some relatively simple creatures have much greater genomic complexity than more complex creatures. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201300037/full View in LinkedIn

VAST RANGE. "Although mutations provide the ultimate material upon which natural selection depends, most mutations are deleterious, and in certain settings can lead to a substantial fitness load. We are attempting to understand the nearly 1000-fold range of variation in the mutation rate that exists across the Tree of Life, through the study of a diversity of invertebrates and unicellular eukaryotes and prokaryotes." http://www.bio.indiana.edu/faculty/directory/profile.php?person=milynch View in LinkedIn

DUBIOUS EQUIVALENT. "The utility of equating complexity with entropy is dubious at best as becomes particularly clear when one attempts to define genomic complexity. Indeed, using sequence entropy (Shannon information) as a measure of genomic complexity is obviously disingenuous given that under this approach the most complex sequence is a truly random one that, almost by definition is devoid of any biological information." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201300037/full View in LinkedIn

UNWOUND THEORY. "It seems logical that organisms should acquire mechanisms that push the age of onset of ill effects from numerous minor defects associated with genetic load toward later ages. However, our analysis suggests that such mechanisms, if carried to extremes, have bad evolutionary repercussions." http://www.pnas.org/content/110/25/10141.full View in LinkedIn

EXEMPLARS OF STREAMLINING. "The mitochondria, the ubiquitous energy-transforming organelles of eukaryotes, and the chloroplasts, the organelles responsible for the eukaryotic photosynthesis, are the ultimate realizations of bacterial reductive evolution." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201300037/full View in LinkedIn