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BRAND NEW CHAPTER. “Although fifteen years have passed since the first viral metagenome was sequenced from an ocean sample, the experimental and bioinformatic methods used for viral metagenomics have not reached a consensus.” Oceans have been found to be stuffed with viruses. https://lnkd.in/g35Hmrp View in LinkedIn

DAMNED BY VAIN PRAISE. “The advent of metagenomics using high-throughput sequencing has revolutionized not only the rate of virus discovery, but also the nature of the discoveries. For example, the viral ecology and etiology of many human diseases are being characterized, non-pathogenic viral commensals are ubiquitous, and the description of environmental viromes is making progress.” https://lnkd.in/g35Hmrp View in LinkedIn

GIANT DATA GAP. “The number and diversity of viral sequences that are identified in metagenomic data far exceeds that of experimentally characterized virus isolates.” https://lnkd.in/gbF24QP View in LinkedIn

TIP OF ICEBERG. “The number and diversity of viral sequences in reference databases are dwarfed by the sequences from their cellular hosts. As a result, state of the art taxonomic classification of viruses recognizes only several thousand viral species, a large fraction of which infect humans. This stands in sharp contrast with the diversity of the cellular organisms on which all viruses depend for their replication.” https://lnkd.in/g35Hmrp View in LinkedIn

TWO DIMENSIONAL SNAPSHOT. “Presently, the genomic era defines the viral universe by characterizing genotypes, but these genotypes are rarely associated with a phenotype and/or a physical entity.” https://lnkd.in/g35Hmrp View in LinkedIn

RNA VIRUSES are even more obscure because replication infidelity makes them mutate so fast, lacking the DNA polymerase proofreading mechanism of DNA viruses leading to huge mutant swarms. “Currently there are 5 orders and 47 families of RNA viruses recognised. There are also many unassigned species and genera.” https://lnkd.in/gG8F5cw View in LinkedIn

RECENT DIVERGENCE. "Studies of species that have recently evolved separate sexes are ideal for testing the idea that hermaphrodites are selected to ‘compromise’ between male and female functions, an important test case for the existence of trade-offs between different functions." https://lnkd.in/exrSaeb View in LinkedIn

MUTANT SWARMS. "Viral quasispecies are currently defined as collections of closely related viral genomes subjected to a continuous process of genetic variation, competition among the variants generated, and selection of the most fit distributions in a given environment." https://lnkd.in/dC3CR5F View in LinkedIn

LOSS OF RECOMBINATION. "Understanding the evolution of sex chromosomes is impossible without first understanding the evolution of separate sexes, because the genetic changes involved in the latter lead with high probability to the chromosomes involved losing recombination, and it is loss of recombination that leads to the special properties of sex chromosomes." https://lnkd.in/exrSaeb View in LinkedIn

AS IF TAXONOMY and the description of viruses were not challenging enough, viral quasispecies completely mock the tidy idea of species. Mutant viral swarms flicker in an ever-changing broth of variant strains, ultimately defying our ability to characterize globally these chamelion geniuses of kaleidoscope adaptation. https://lnkd.in/gDaeFeM View in LinkedIn