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GENE SWAPS. "The birth of the eukaryotic virus realm can be envisaged as a turbulent process of mixing and matching of genes from several different sources, the most important one being, probably, the gene pool of prokaryotic viruses, in the melting pot of the emergent eukaryotic cell." https://lnkd.in/dHhQ6QH View in LinkedIn

DIFFERENT HOST HABITATS. "The representation of different genome strategies are dramatically different between prokaryotic and eukaryotic viruses, the foremost distinction being the higher prevalence of DNA viruses in prokaryotes contrasted by the preponderance of RNA viruses in eukaryotes." https://lnkd.in/dHhQ6QH View in LinkedIn

CAVEAT: "the available bacteriophage genomes account for but a tiny slice of the enormous phage diversity, so it is impossible to rule out that direct progenitors of the main groups of eukaryotic viruses are lurking in the unexplored parts of the phage domain." https://lnkd.in/dHhQ6QH View in LinkedIn

DRASTIC GENOME REMODELING. "These lines of viral gene evolution form multiple intersections in the melting pot of eukaryogenesis: the path between the two domains was not smooth but rather involved drastic remolding of the viral genomes." https://lnkd.in/dHhQ6QH View in LinkedIn

UBIQUITOUS INFECTIONS. "A rough calculation reveals that there are many billions of chronic virus infections in humans, with each of the ∼6.75 billion of us harboring ∼8–12 chronic infections. Some of these viruses are so common that one would be hard put to find uninfected control patients for studies to identify viral associations with disease or effects on the “normal” immune system." http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867409007831 View in LinkedIn

EUK GENOME ORIGINS. "The pivotal contribution of prokaryotic viruses to the origin of eukaryotic viral genomes appears to be as strongly supported by the conservation of the hallmark genes across most of the virus world as the original emergence of viruses from the primordial gene pool." https://lnkd.in/dHhQ6QH View in LinkedIn

NEW PARADIGM IN DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY. "Evolutionary developmental biology (evodevo) attempts to explain how the process of organismal development evolves, utilizing a comparative approach to investigate changes in developmental pathways and processes that occur during the evolution of a given lineage." https://lnkd.in/dD4GcAS View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE focuses on a brilliant article by Chelsea D Specht, from Professor of Plant Biology at Berkeley, considering evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) approaches to flower form adaptation. "In 1977, a revolution in thinking about evolution and developmental biology began, with the arrival of recombinant DNA technology in genetics, and the papers Ontogeny and Phylogeny by Stephen J. Gould and Evolution by Tinkering by François Jacob." This is the mature flowering of that line of thinking. https://lnkd.in/dFhPQGP View in LinkedIn

RNA TO DNA. "The transition from the RNA to the DNA world was a major event in the history of life. The invention of DNA required the appearance of enzymatic activities for both synthesis of DNA precursors, retro-transcription of RNA templates and replication of single and double-stranded DNA molecules...DNA can be considered as a modified form of RNA." https://lnkd.in/dNTbYMw View in LinkedIn

ANCIENT LIFE FORMS. "Negatively stranded RNA viruses have genome structures and replication patterns that are dissimilar to all known cell types. As demonstrated by phylogenetic analyses, cellular replicases are related to each other; however, there is no similarity between RNA-viral replicases and those of any known cell types." https://lnkd.in/e-pJFM6 View in LinkedIn