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RNA VS DNA VIRUSES. "A major challenge for understanding the evolution of mutation rates is the question of why DNA and RNA viruses, which apparently share similar lifestyles, show such different mutation rates...RNA viruses have elevated mutation rates because this confers increased adaptability, then why do DNA viruses maintain proofreading mechanisms?" https://lnkd.in/e9KGgbm View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this fragment from nature featuring a lively paper about the amount of global DNA as a way of looking at biodiversity. Quite charming. And one perspective is that life appears to have been driven in part to accumulate genetic information in the form of DNA, and this information is liberally shared among the planet's inhabitants. It's all about information. View in LinkedIn

FUTURE PROSPECTS. "We might also wonder about the future computational power of the biosphere. In the next billion years or more, will the information content or the computational speed increase, and how will they be distributed amongst the major domains and subgroups of life?" https://lnkd.in/ewABXeK View in LinkedIn

DNA IN BIOMASS. "The DNA is incorporated within approximately 2 × 10(12) tonnes of biomass and approximately 5 × 10(30) living cells, the latter dominated by prokaryotes." https://lnkd.in/ewABXeK View in LinkedIn

"NEW GENES provide the raw material for evolutionary innovation that allows organisms to adapt, increase in complexity, and form new species. An organism can acquire new genes through at least three distinct, but potentially overlapping, mechanisms." https://lnkd.in/e3rTkFh View in LinkedIn

MISSING DATA. "Despite impressive advances in molecular biology and genome sequencing of species, our analysis emphasises that we still lack very fundamental data about the biomass of different types of life on Earth and their distribution, which is essential for refining estimates of the information content of the biosphere." A very, very long way to go. https://lnkd.in/ewABXeK View in LinkedIn

TOTAL GLOBAL BIOMASS. "Although the cell numbers in eukaryotes are approximately two to five orders of magnitude lower than the number of prokaryotes (animals by biome: 4.11606 × 10(25) cells; animals by biomass: 1.28907 × 10(26) cells; plants: 2.44730 × 10(28) cells, compared to prokaryotes: 5 × 10(30) cells, the average genome size in prokaryotes is 3.2147 Mb, compared to the higher value in plants (5,958 Mb) and animals (4,456 Mb)." https://lnkd.in/ewABXeK View in LinkedIn

GENETIC STREAMLINING of microorganisms complicates the purely quantitative argument for global gene contribution and overlooks the efficiencies of symbiotic or parasitic genetic outsourcing. View in LinkedIn

SURPRISING SIMILARITY. "Comparing the quantity of DNA in microorganisms, plants, and animals shows that there is a remarkable similarity in size of the contributions, within two orders of magnitude. This similarity is surprising, given that prokaryotes evolved at least 3 billion years before plants and animals. The likely reason for this is the larger genome size in eukaryotes." https://lnkd.in/ewABXeK View in LinkedIn

IMPACT OF EXTINCTIONS. "Although statistics such as the destruction of 75% of life at the end-Cretaceous boundary are impressive, the true importance of this to the biosphere’s information content and processing power would depend on the genome sizes of extinct organisms, what influence the extinction had on microbial populations, and the effects on DNA transcription rates (altered by changed metabolic states in a stressed biosphere)." https://lnkd.in/ewABXeK View in LinkedIn