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SONG OF DARWIN. "The more I study nature, the more I become impressed […] that the contrivances and beautiful adaptations [acquired through natural selection] transcend in an incomparable degree [those] which the most fertile imagination of the most imaginative man could suggest with unlimited time at his disposal." https://lnkd.in/eykUy37 View in LinkedIn

Watch this space. http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/27/15077864/elon-musk-neuralink-brain-computer-interface-ai-cyborgs View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE continues with the theme of endosymbiont inheritance as part of a spectrum that concluded in the permanent engulfment of algae to form the permanent organelles chloroplasts and mitochondria during our evolutionary past. It also continues on the theme that biological individuality is an old concept and that we are holobionts, mosaic creatures composed of the genes of many species. View in LinkedIn

NEW CONCEPT. "In this way what historically seemed to be competing and selfish viruses can instead provide a unifying collective of viruses (and their defective participants) to better explain evolution, conservation as well as the plasticity and often cumulative genetic identities of complex organisms more coherently than the previous quasispecies concept." https://lnkd.in/eWydwab View in LinkedIn

PROTECTIVE MODULES. "All of the former competing groups become unified into stable/unstable modules that are counter-regulated, to provide immunity and memory systems, such as VDJ and CRISPRS/Cas, against related genetic parasites for the host." https://lnkd.in/eWydwab View in LinkedIn

ADDICTION MODULES. "Infected host organisms are the habitats in which such formerly competing agent groups (‘‘Gangen’’) now unify in addiction modules, which provide group identity such as TA, RM, and ID modules." https://lnkd.in/eWydwab View in LinkedIn

RNA RIBOSOME NETWORKS. "Recently, there has been an accumulation of experimental evidence that RNA ribozymes do act and emerge from collectives that can also form networks." https://lnkd.in/eWydwab View in LinkedIn

FOREIGN GENOME EDITING. "There is growing evidence that natural genome-editing competences of viruses are essential for the evolution of the eukaryotic nucleus, the adaptive immune system and the placental mammals." https://lnkd.in/e-pJFM6 View in LinkedIn

NEW GENETIC REGULATORS. "LTRs are highly involved in the emergence of new regulatory networks, such as the origin of the placenta" and other cellular systems. (LTR = long terminal repeats, from retroviruses). https://lnkd.in/eWydwab View in LinkedIn

GENOME EDITORS. "In terms of active editors of the human genome, there are about 330,000 solo LTRs each of which must have initially corresponded to an intact ERV (*10 kb) subsequently lost by deletion. This means that 3.3 gB of human DNA (current size of our genome) was once retrovirus during our evolution." (LTR = long terminal repeats, from retroviruses; ERV = endogenous retroviruses). https://lnkd.in/eWydwab View in LinkedIn