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MAVERICKS. "Polintons, a remarkable group of selfish elements. The apparent dual lifestyle of the Polintons seems to have entailed outstanding evolutionary resilience and versatility, making them a hotbed of evolution of eukaryotic selfish elements that spawned diverse groups of viruses in a broad range of sizes, along with related plasmids." https://lnkd.in/eqriJpu View in LinkedIn

ANCIENT SELFISH LINEAGE. "We hypothesize that Polintons were the first group of eukaryotic double-stranded DNA viruses to evolve from bacteriophages and that they gave rise to most large DNA viruses of eukaryotes and various other selfish genetic elements." https://lnkd.in/eS9xu2G View in LinkedIn

SOME ARE NOT AUTONOMOUS. "Unlike retrotransposons, which synthesize their DNA copies by using their own RNA-dependent DNA polymerase (reverse transcriptase), DNA transposons cannot synthesize DNA. Instead, they multiply by using the host replication machinery." https://lnkd.in/evfenaM View in LinkedIn

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SOME ARE AUTONOMOUS. "Analogously to known transposable elements, Polintons exist as autonomous and nonautonomous elements. Our data suggest that Polintons have evolved from a linear plasmid that acquired a retroviral integrase at least 1 billion years ago." Or, put another way: some are self-governed and self-reproducing mobile and ancient parasitic genes. https://lnkd.in/evfenaM View in LinkedIn

"POLINTONS: a hotbed of eukaryotic virus, transposon and plasmid evolution. Polintons (also known as Mavericks) are large DNA transposons that are widespread in the genomes of eukaryotes. We have recently shown that Polintons encode virus capsid proteins, which suggests that these transposons might form virions, at least under some conditions." https://lnkd.in/eqriJpu View in LinkedIn

TRANSPOSABLE ELEMENTS (TEs). "Despite an enormous diversity of eukaryotic TEs, they belong to only two types, called retrotransposons and DNA transposons. Whereas a retrotransposon is transposed (retroposed) via reverse transcription of its mRNAs, a DNA transposon is transposed via transfer of its genomic copy from one site to another." https://lnkd.in/evfenaM View in LinkedIn

INFLAMMATION INITIATION. "Our data show that pathogen-driven inflammatory responses in the gut can generate transient enterobacterial blooms in which conjugative transfer occurs at unprecedented rates. These blooms may favor reassortment of plasmid-encoded genes between pathogens and commensals fostering the spread of fitness-, virulence-, and antibiotic-resistance determinants." https://lnkd.in/ejBu7My View in LinkedIn

PARASITIC GENETIC ELEMENTS. "Genomes of most eukaryotes are populated by DNA copies of parasitic elements known as transposable elements (TEs) capable of reproducing themselves in the host genome in a non-Mendelian fashion" by horizontal gene transfer. https://lnkd.in/evfenaM View in LinkedIn

HOT SPOT. "Dense microbial communities, such as the human gut microbiota are now considered a hot spot of microbial gene transfer. This is all the more interesting since it was recently discovered that the rate of HGT is apparently eight to nine orders of magnitude faster than previously thought." (HGT = horizontal gene transfer). https://lnkd.in/e5FE9cJ View in LinkedIn