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UBIQUITOUS VIRUSES "are numerically the most abundant biological entities, and they are profoundly important in shaping the ecology and evolution of just about every species on Earth. Yet viruses are not considered to be alive by most biologists, and they have arguably fallen by the wayside in the genomics revolution." http://www.genomebiology.com/2005/6/3/212 View in LinkedIn

CRITICAL ROLE. "I want to convince you of the importance of viruses other than as purveyors of disease, and that if it were not for viruses, life on the planet would probably not exist, or at least we would not exist." https://lnkd.in/e2MHV6z View in LinkedIn

"METAGENOMIC analyses have shown that environmental viral communities are incredibly diverse. There are an estimated 5000 viral genotypes in 200 liters of seawater and possibly a million different viral genotypes in one kilogram of marine sediment. By contrast, some culturing and molecular studies have found that viruses move between different biomes." https://lnkd.in/e9yYemH View in LinkedIn

SLOW AND FAST CHANGE. "Flu viruses have the capacity to change both slowly, through small genetic changes that are passed down to daughter generations, and quickly, through a process called “reassortment” that mixes larger genetic segments from several viral strains to create a new virus. Both processes are important to influenza’s success as a disease-causing organism during flu seasons and in pandemics." https://lnkd.in/eNYwEBt View in LinkedIn

"DIVERSITY is not an evolutionary accident, but the organizing principle in biology." https://lnkd.in/e6G-N4S View in LinkedIn

PRESCIENT. "As Leonardo da Vinci reportedly said, ‘simplicity is the ultimate sophistication’" http://www.nature.com/ismej/journal/v8/n8/full/ismej201460a.html View in LinkedIn

GIANT GLOBAL IMPACT. "Ocean viruses may turn over as much as 150 gigatons of carbon per year—more than 30 times the standing abundance of carbon in marine plankton. This recycling of carbon and other nutrients suggests that viruses need to be considered in quantitative, dynamic models of global change." Not bad for a non-living creature. https://lnkd.in/dzmPw57 View in LinkedIn

ADVANCED BUT UNCULTURED. "Consequences of reductive evolution in streamlined organisms include atypical patterns of prototrophy and the absence of common regulatory systems, which have been linked to difficulty in culturing these cells." Lovely review on streamlining theory. https://lnkd.in/ebFkv5a View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS our review of evolutionary genomic simplification. Simple organisms are generally regarded as lesser in the Victorian tree of life. Even viruses, that many think are not living. But evolution shows that in many cases, simpler systems with outsourced genes may in fact be more advanced. And often much older. And smaller systems can in fact be a greater complexity. It takes a lot to be simple. View in LinkedIn

SECOND CONSENSUS: "eukaryotic genomes have a chimaeric nature: genes for information storage and processing are archaea-related, and genes for metabolic or ‘operational’ processes are mostly bacterial in nature (but not necessarily derived from the mitochondrial progenitor)." http://www.biochemsoctrans.org/content/41/1/451.full View in LinkedIn