Month: September 2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

BUT A WORK IN PROCESS. “The recent discovery of a whole diversity of giant viruses in quick succession demonstrated that biology is still a scientific area where some of the most established concepts might be proven wrong, or seriously misleading.” https://lnkd.in/dMhm-ht View in LinkedIn

BIG LIFE. "There’s no doubt this is a living organism,” says Jean-Michel Claverie, a virologist at the the CNRS UPR laboratories in Marseilles, part of France’s basic-research agency. “The fact that it can get sick makes it more alive.” https://lnkd.in/dihxig3 View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE continues and concludes from last weekend on plant dormancy, with a focus on the biochemical and genetic aspects. This fascinating topic has enthralled botanists for a long time, and has very practical applications in agriculture. It is the confluence of epigenetics and biochemistry, for the environmental triggers vary in timing, and it is critical that the sleeping plants trigger development in a coordinated way across time and space in order to hit reproductive windows synchronously. View in LinkedIn

"EPIGENETIC STATES are altered in dormant versus non-dormant buds. Deletion within the locus containing tandemly repeated DORMANCY ASSOCIATED MADS-BOX (DAM) genes has been linked to the evergrowing peach locus that prevents dormancy. DAM6 is upregulated during dormancy and its repression during dormancy release correlates with changes in histone modifications." https://lnkd.in/duazcMZ View in LinkedIn