Category: Uncategorized

MARGIN OF ERROR. "However, more recent computational models have demonstrated that genomes could sustain multiple slightly deleterious mutations per generation." http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004351 View in LinkedIn

MUTATION RATE. "Currently, the rate of mutation in humans is estimated to be anywhere from 70–150 mutations per generation. By this line of reasoning, we would estimate that, at most, only 1% of the nucleotides in the genome are essential for viability in a strict sequence-specific way." http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004351 View in LinkedIn

MUTATION BREAKPOINT. "This rate is approximately one deleterious mutation per generation. In this context it becomes clear that the overall mutation rate would place an upper limit to the amount of functional DNA." http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004351 View in LinkedIn

BIRTH OF NEW GENES. "Rarely, these mutations will turn out to be beneficial, and a new gene may arise (“neofunctionalization”)." http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004351 View in LinkedIn

FREE PASS. "Gene duplication can alleviate the constraint imposed by natural selection on changes to important gene regions by allowing one copy to maintain the original function as the other undergoes mutation." http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1004351 View in LinkedIn

SNAKES AND LADDERS. "Given the fractions of conserved and lineage-specific genes in modern archaeal genomes, this translates into approximately 2,500 genes in the ancestral genome, which is a larger genome than most of the extant archaea possess. The reconstructed pattern of gene loss and gain in archaea is non-trivial: there seems to have been some net gene gain at the base of each of the major archaeal branches that was almost invariably followed by substantial gene loss...this could be a general pattern of genome evolution." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201300037/full View in LinkedIn

DEATH AS AN ADAPTATION TO LIFE. "Instead of imagining death as the antithesis of life, death must be appreciated as an evolving part of life and an adaptation to life." https://muse.jhu.edu/chapter/275814 View in LinkedIn

ANOTHER EXEMPLAR. "The most compelling evidence of the dominance of genome reduction and simplification was obtained through the reconstruction of the genomic evolution of archaea that almost exclusively are free-living organisms. The latest ML reconstruction based on a comparative analysis of 120 archaeal genomes traced between 1,400 and 1,800 gene families to the last common ancestor of the extant archaea." (ML = maximum likelihood methods). http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201300037/full View in LinkedIn

CONSTRAINTS ON REDUCTIONS. "Certainly, the evolution of the genomes of parasites, symbionts and commensals is not a one-way path of reduction. On the contrary, the reduction ratchet is constrained by the advantages of retaining certain metabolic pathways that complement the host metabolism." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201300037/full View in LinkedIn

TWO METHODS. "Genome reduction apparently occurs in two distinct and distinguishable manners, i.e. either via a neutral ratchet of genetic material loss or by adaptive genome streamlining." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201300037/full View in LinkedIn