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PRIMITIVE REPLICONS. "Studies on the origin and evolution of plasmids may provide valuable insights on the promiscuous nature of DNA. The first examples of the selfish nature of nucleic acids are exemplified by primordial oligoribonucleotides which evolved into primitive replicons." https://lnkd.in/etHekGu View in LinkedIn

CONFLICTING IRON THERAPEUTIC STRATEGIES. "To date, the implication of divalent metals have been described in two different immune strategies that aim to fight microbial invaders. One consists in depriving microbes of essential divalent metals whereas the other aims at overloading invaders with toxic concentrations of metal." https://lnkd.in/eRyAPb7 View in LinkedIn

FRESH GENES. "Typically, a plasmid includes one or more essential genes encoding replicative functions. In addition, it may harbor one or more genes coding for a variable panoply of accessory metabolic processes and functions that are, in general, different from those encoded by chromosome(s)." http://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2148-10-59 View in LinkedIn

DIVERSE IRON SOURCE EXPLOITATION. "During infection, bacterial pathogens are capable of altering the battlefield to increase the abundance of potential iron sources. Bacterial cytotoxins damage host cells, leading to the release of ferritin while hemolytic toxins lyse erythrocytes, liberating hemoglobin. The resulting inflammatory response includes the release of lactoferrin from secondary granules contained with polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMNs)." https://lnkd.in/epJAeXg View in LinkedIn

PLASMIDS "are actually involved in many accessory functions and constitute, together with "not essential" chromosomal regions, what is referred to as the "dispensable genome" in the microbial pan-genome concept." http://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2148-10-59 View in LinkedIn

IRON MINING. "Bacterial pathogens can also elaborate secreted heme-scavenging molecules that remove heme from host hemoproteins. These molecules, known as hemophores, are functionally analogous to siderophores but are proteins that target heme, whereas siderophores are small molecules that target iron atoms." https://lnkd.in/epJAeXg View in LinkedIn

PLASMID SECOND ROLE. "Plasmids can provide a basis for genomic rearrangements via homologous recombination and so they can facilitate the loss or acquisition of genes during these events, which eventually may lead to horizontal gene transfer (HGT)." http://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2148-10-59 View in LinkedIn

PLASMID FIRST ROLE. "Prokaryotic plasmids have a dual importance in the microbial world: first they have a great impact on the metabolic functions of the host cell, providing additional traits that can be accumulated in the cell without altering the gene content of the bacterial chromosome." https://lnkd.in/e4bYaQJ View in LinkedIn

OVERLAPPING GENE SETS. "The extended virus world, which includes both bona fide viruses and related mobile elements, is a complex network of genomes that share partially overlapping sets of genes." https://lnkd.in/eqriJpu View in LinkedIn

COLLABORATIVE ACTIVES. "Plasmids often encode and express genes of a variety of functions apart from those for their own mobility and replication, such as antibiotic resistance, virulence, environmental protection (including biofilm formation), DNA repair and supplementary metabolic pathways. They can thus be seen as collaborative elements that enhance the functionality and adaptiveness of their host cells." https://lnkd.in/e7VVjkg View in LinkedIn