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SILENT MAJORITY. "Little is known about some of the viruses that inhabit us. This is due to the focus of research on viruses that cause disease in a high proportion of infected individuals. Many of the most prevalent chronic virus infections only rarely cause disease, are not associated with any disease at all, or cause disease primarily in immunocompromised individuals." http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867409007831 View in LinkedIn

GENE PATHWAYS VERSUS POPULATIONS. "For decades, developmental geneticists have been elucidating the genes and genetic pathways involved in floral development in model species in laboratory environments. Simultaneously, evolutionary biologists have investigated genetic variation in natural populations as a means of understanding the genetic architecture underlying the development and evolution of adaptive (= heritable beneficial phenotype) traits." https://lnkd.in/dD4GcAS View in LinkedIn

SEA-CHANGE. "A sea-change in how we define viral infection is being driven by a combination of classical genetics and the genomic revolution. In this emerging view, the well-known role of host genetic variation comes to the fore because highly specific allelic polymorphisms or mutations predispose a limited number of individuals to diseases caused by viruses that otherwise only rarely cause overt disease. In a real sense, the genes in the host “cause” the disease, as the viruses can infect many but cause disease in only a few." http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867409007831 View in LinkedIn

LINKING THE PARTS. "The temporal element linking microevolutionary processes to macroevolutionary patterns is development: an organism's genotype is converted to phenotype by ontogenetic processes. Because selection acts upon the phenotype, the connection between evolutionary genetics and developmental evolution becomes essential to understanding adaptive evolution in organismal form and function." https://lnkd.in/dD4GcAS View in LinkedIn

CROSSTALK. "There is significant crosstalk between chronic viral infections, as well as between viral infections and other types of infection. For example, HIV and HCV coinfection worsens the prognosis of both infections. The impact of persisting infections is not always negative. For example, infection by herpesviruses (HHV-6 or HHV-7) or GB virus C may inhibit HIV progression in some settings." http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867409007831 View in LinkedIn

ANOTHER PART OF THE PICTURE. "Microevolutionary processes, including mutation, genetic drift, natural selection and gene flow, can provide the foundation for macroevolutionary patterns observed as morphological evolution and adaptation." https://lnkd.in/dD4GcAS View in LinkedIn

HIGH TURNOVER. "Even asymptomatic viruses such as anelloviruses are under continuous immune surveillance. It has been estimated that over 90% of anelloviruses in serum are replaced daily with over a billion new virions, suggesting that significant antigen expression may occur for years after the acquisition of infection in the first years of life." http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867409007831 View in LinkedIn

ONE ASPECT OF THE PICTURE. "Evolutionary genetics uses a population approach to understand how organismal changes in form or function are linked to underlying genetics, focusing on changes in gene and genotype frequencies within populations and the fixation of genotypic variation into traits that define species or evoke speciation events." https://lnkd.in/dD4GcAS 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