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GIANT VIRUSES. "Within the last decade, developments in virology have started to reveal more and more that viruses might in fact be alive. One was the discovery of mimiviruses, giant viruses with large genomic libraries that are even bigger than some bacteria. To put this in perspective, some viruses, like the Ebola virus, have as few as seven genes." https://lnkd.in/eH7hpgG View in LinkedIn

MODERN MALADY. "If a virus be neither organism nor molecule, what is its nature? What is a virus? It is a malady of our time that words are often deprived of their meaning." https://lnkd.in/dDiKsry View in LinkedIn

REDUCTIVE EVOLUTION. “The interesting thing about these results is that they indicate that viruses must have diversified from ancient cells by a process called reductive evolution, where organisms simplify instead of becoming more complex." The ultimate in outsourcing. https://lnkd.in/eH7hpgG View in LinkedIn

BAG OF TRICKS. "Biologists long favored the view that viruses were mere boxes of chemicals." https://lnkd.in/dHuVTgq View in LinkedIn

INCLUSION IN THE TREE. "It suggests that viruses were not simply shed genetic material of cells, but shared unique properties with cells (and thus were living) and eventually evolved as separate entities. “We are now able to build truly universal trees of life...that describe the origin and diversification of organisms and viruses.” https://lnkd.in/eH7hpgG View in LinkedIn

CRYSTALIZED VIRUS. "Their demotion to inert chemicals came after 1935, when Wendell M. Stanley and his colleagues, at what is now the Rockefeller University in New York City, crystallized a virus— tobacco mosaic virus—for the first time." https://lnkd.in/dHuVTgq View in LinkedIn

VIRAL FOOTPRINT. "Caetano-Anolles and Nasir analyzed the protein folds of 5,080 organisms—3,460 viruses and 1,620 cells from other organisms representing every branch of the tree of life. What they found was huge: 442 protein folds were shared between cells and viruses along with 66 folds that were unique to viruses." https://lnkd.in/eH7hpgG View in LinkedIn

NON-INTUITIVE. "For about 100 years, the scientific community has repeatedly changed its collective mind over what viruses are. First seen as poisons, then as life-forms, then biological chemicals, viruses today are thought of as being in a gray area between living and nonliving: they cannot replicate on their own but can do so in truly living cells and can also affect the behavior of their hosts profoundly." https://lnkd.in/dHuVTgq View in LinkedIn

SCANT FEW. "Viruses clearly evolve—ask any medical professional—and they have tremendous diversity as well (There are less than 4,900 viruses described so far, but estimates have the total number of viral species at more than a million)." https://lnkd.in/eH7hpgG View in LinkedIn

RAPID EVOLUTION. "But viruses themselves also evolve. New viruses, such as the AIDS-causing HIV-1, may be the only biological entities that researchers can actually witness come into being, providing a real-time example of evolution in action." https://lnkd.in/dHuVTgq View in LinkedIn