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NO EXPLANATION NEEDED. "Second, transposability itself ensures the survival of the transposed element, regardless of effects on organismal phenotype or evolutionary adaptability (unless these are sufficiently negative). Thus no other explanation for the origin and maintenance of transposable elements is necessary. https://lnkd.in/duMgVnm View in LinkedIn

MOBILE ELEMENTS. "First, DNAs without immediate phenotypic benefit are of no immediate selective advantage to their possessor. Excess DNA should represent an energetic burden, and some of the activities of transposable elements are frankly destructive. Evolution is not anticipatory; structures do not evolve because they may later prove useful." https://lnkd.in/duMgVnm View in LinkedIn

OUTSIDE OF SELECTION. "Although transposable elements may well be beneficially involved in eukaryote evolution, there are two reasons to doubt they arose or are maintained by selection pressures for such evolutionary functions." https://lnkd.in/duMgVnm View in LinkedIn

THE KEY PROOF. "If a given gene (region of DNA) or class of genes (regions) has evolved a strategy which increases its probability of survival within cells, then no additional (phenotypic) explanation for its origin or its continued existence is required." https://lnkd.in/duMgVnm View in LinkedIn

SURVIVAL OF THE GENE. "A useful way to look at this problem is Dawkins's "Selfish Gene" picture of evolution, where the fundamental unit to be maintained by natural selection is not the individual, nor the group or the species, but the gene." https://lnkd.in/ecMXQ_u View in LinkedIn

ADD-ON VIRUS. "Most viruses are add-on viruses. They function by appending their code to the host code, and/or by relocating the host code and inserting their own code to the beginning. The add-on virus then alters the startup information of the program, executing the viral code before the code for the main program." https://lnkd.in/eCG7b3z View in LinkedIn

COMPUTING MOLECULES. "Paul Rothemund showed chemical processes could perform not just complex, but universal computation: a combination of DNA strands and restriction enzymes could, in principle, simulate a Turing machine. Thus, the simplest kinds of chemistry can, in theory, perform any computation.” https://lnkd.in/dhc7k7H View in LinkedIn

"A SHELL VIRUS is one that forms a “shell” (as in “eggshell” rather than “Unix shell”) around the original code." https://lnkd.in/eCG7b3z View in LinkedIn

"COMPANION VIRUS, is not really a virus at all, but a form of trojan horse that uses the execution path mechanism to execute in place of a normal program. Unlike all other viral forms, it does not alter any existing code in any fashion: companion viruses create new executable files with a name similar to an existing program, and chosen so that they are normally executed prior to the “real” program." https://lnkd.in/eCG7b3z View in LinkedIn

VIROID. "True viruses have two major components: one that handles the spread of the virus, and a “payload” or “manipulation” task. The payload task may not be present (has null effect), or it may await a set of predetermined circumstances before triggering." https://lnkd.in/eCG7b3z View in LinkedIn