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CHIMERIC GENES. “More interestingly, MULE-derived putative genes tended to arise from multiple parental sequences, which could potentially form novel chimeric gene structures. This is consistent with our previous discovery that the formation of chimeric ORFs is the general mode of new gene origination in Oryza species.” (MULEs = Mutator-like transposable elements; ORF = open reading frame; Oryza = crop plants). http://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-016-0954-8 View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this first weekend on viruses. These enigmatic and talented creatures have been maligned by biologists who either have only focused on their disease roles, or who have stubbornly refused to drop a Victorian mindset that assumed that they are not alive. Alive they are, in an extreme version of outsourcing. And causing diseases is a minor part of the full spectrum of these creatures. Undoing these two biases is underway but may take decades more to sink into the general consciousness. View in LinkedIn

VERTICAL TREES MISS RELATIONSHIPS. "Phylogenetic trees, however, cannot capture horizontal, or reticulate, events, which occur when distinct clades merge together to form a new hybrid lineage." http://www.pnas.org/content/110/46/18566.full View in LinkedIn

VERTICAL VS HORIZONTAL EVOLUTION. "Evolution is mediated not only by random mutations over a number of generations (vertical evolution), but also through the mixture of genomic material between individuals of different lineages (horizontal evolution)." http://www.pnas.org/content/110/46/18566.full View in LinkedIn

CONFOUNDED TRADITIONAL TREES. "The tree structure is currently the accepted paradigm to represent evolutionary relationships between organisms, species or other taxa. However, horizontal, or reticulate, genomic exchanges are pervasive in nature and confound characterization of phylogenetic trees." https://lnkd.in/dkR5NBx View in LinkedIn

AIDS STAR. "The phylogeny of HIV provides a good example of a star-like tree, as the prevalence of HIV infection rose rapidly throughout the 1980s." https://lnkd.in/dDjCWve View in LinkedIn

CLONAL SMALL POPULATIONS. "Star-like trees arise because viruses are more likely to share a recent common ancestor when the population is small, and a growing population has an increasingly smaller population size towards the past." https://lnkd.in/dDjCWve View in LinkedIn

NEW CLASS OF GENES. "Noncoding regulatory RNAs, such as miRNAs, are a recently discovered class of genes, and the number of miRNA genes that exist among eukaryotic genomes is very much an open question. Many miRNA genes are evolutionarily conserved and may have functional orthologs in multiple species." https://lnkd.in/dmzSnGT View in LinkedIn

NEW STAR TREES. "Rapid expansion of a virus in a population will be reflected by a “star-like” tree, in which external branches are long relative to internal branches." https://lnkd.in/dDjCWve View in LinkedIn

MASSIVE REGULATORS. "Micro-RNAs (miRNAs) represent a class of small non-coding RNAs (typically 19–23 nucleotides) which act by annealing to partially complementary binding sites present on the 3' untranslated regions (UTR) of messenger RNAs (mRNAs) leading to inhibition of protein translation or by inducing mRNA decay. In mammals, miRNA regulate tissue-specific protein expression and are involved in virtually all cellular processes. Up to one-third of mammalian mRNAs are susceptible to miRNA-mediated regulation." https://lnkd.in/dRP_E_K View in LinkedIn