Year: 2022

TWO CANDIDATE MECHANISMS. “Although the underlying mechanisms remain unknown, candidate mechanisms can be assigned, as genome integrity depends on the repair of double strand DNA breaks and mitotic and meiotic recombination, complex processes that are highly linked.” https://lnkd.in/eC8eb-V View in LinkedIn

ROLE OF VIRAL JUMPING GENES. “Furthermore, transposable element activity can mediate genomic rearrangements, which may be regulated by epigenetic modifications such as DNA methylation and histone modification.” https://lnkd.in/eC8eb-V View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE continues from last weekend on the positive impact of viruses on life on this planet. For a very long time, viruses have only been associated with diseases, and little else was known about them. But few are pathogenic, and the rest have played either benign or astonishingly advantageous roles during evolution. We still have a long way to go in understanding them. Just look at the composition of our own genomes, replete with viral footprints. What does this mean? View in LinkedIn

HUMAN GENOME RELICS. “Most of the junk consists of: (1) very obvious examples of broken genes (pseudogenes 5%); (2) bits and pieces of transposon sequences that used to be capable of transposing but have mutated over time (45%); and (3) ancient viral sequences that have degenerated (9%). That's 59% of the genome that's clearly junk DNA. In addition, there's plenty of evidence that most intron sequences are dispensable. That accounts for another 28% of the genome. The total amount of junk DNA is at least 87%.“ https://lnkd.in/d2xZtXk View in LinkedIn

VIRAL RESISTANCE. "We have come to recently realize that viruses are omnipresent so all life must survive in its virosphere habitat. And such survival often involves virus themselves since virus, their defective and various other genetic parasites (mostly called transposons) can and often do provide virus resistance systems." https://lnkd.in/etdQ9rN View in LinkedIn

VIRAL TOOLKIT. "These viral colonizers then can also be used to provide new sources of host complexity (such as the placenta)." https://lnkd.in/etdQ9rN View in LinkedIn

VIRAL EDITORS OF HOST SYSTEMS. "The concept is that viruses are fully competent agents and editors of all host systems of instruction (DNA, RNA, epigenetic, translational etc.). Thus, they provide the host with new sources of instruction systems (not errors). In addition, they promote network formation by providing coherent societies (quasispecies populations) of agents able to edit host code content (and add new identity) in a diffuse, distributed manner, which promotes the creation of and editing of host regulatory networks." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/apm.12485/full View in LinkedIn

PERFECT EVOLUTIONARY SUBSTRATE. "Viruses possess all the advantages of evolution relative to host: extreme genetic adaptability, extreme diversity, extreme numbers, extreme rates of genetic exchange, tolerance for ‘unfit’ variation, and the ability to reassemble from cryptic or ‘dead’ parts. They can transition between the chemical and living world." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/apm.12485/full View in LinkedIn

VIRAL DRIVER. "I am asserting that most initial genetic and selective events that transform host regulatory complexity are usually ‘pushed’ by virus action in a general direction of increasing complexity. In this way, viruses present an omnipresent and ancient issue." https://lnkd.in/etdQ9rN View in LinkedIn

OPPOSING LYTIC INFECTION. "Even ‘defective’ (and parasitic) components of viruses (and transposons) can express virus-specific regulatory (opposing) molecules (including ncRNA), clearly promote virus–host persistence, and respond to oppose lytic virus infection." https://lnkd.in/etdQ9rN View in LinkedIn