Category: Uncategorized

ABUNDANT GENE MECHANISMS IN PHAGES. "WO is a dynamic element that has a significant impact on the genetic diversity of Wolbachia. Analysis shows that WO molecular evolution is a complex process involving vertical transmission and horizontal transfer, recombination between phages, and hitchhiking of other mobile elements on WO." https://lnkd.in/dG3vir9 View in LinkedIn

WO BACTERIOPHAGE VIRUSES IN WOLBACHIA. "Screening of Wolbachia infections from a variety of invertebrate hosts indicate that prophage WO (named after Wolbachia) is widespread in the genus." https://lnkd.in/dG3vir9 View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE concludes this weekend on the Wolbachia theme which reveals unusual gene transfers during parasitism. Parasitism has long been likened to an arms race, although like everything else in Nature, there is a broad Bell curve. Between the Wolbachia bacteria, the bacteriophage WO virus that preys on the Wolbachia bacteria, and the eukaryotic host, there is shown to be liberal gene exchange, enriching the adaptive toolbox. More than likely, this is far from an isolated case. https://lnkd.in/dZe2vg8 View in LinkedIn

GENE OWNERSHIP. "Plasmids and bacteriophages may induce cell death in the host (or non-host daughter) cell. Whether or not this is considered an example of programmed organismal death, of course, hinges on whether or not selfish genetic elements are considered part of the organismal genome. The benefits in this case are straightforward and focused on the level of the selfish genetic element." View in LinkedIn

PARADOXICAL POISON AND ANTIDOTE. "In prokaryotes, conjugative plasmids often encode for the simultaneous production of long-lived toxins and short-lived antitoxins. When these are present together, the toxin is harmless to the host. However, if one daughter cell is cured of the plasmid, it will inherit toxic cytoplasm without a source of antitoxin and will die. While this is easily explained as a ‘selfish’ adaptation on the part of the plasmid, chromosomally-encoded toxin-antitoxin systems probably do not function in gene-level competition." https://www.linkedin.com/redir/general-malware-page?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2eesciencecentral%2eorg%2Fjournals%2Fare-internal-death-promoting-mechanisms-ever-adaptive-2329-9002%2e1000113%2epdf View in LinkedIn

MIRROR. "The presence of eukaryotic-like protein domains in bacteriophage genomes is of special note as they curiously mirror eukaryotic genes in large eukaryotic viruses that aid in viral mimicry and manipulation of host processes." https://lnkd.in/dYh3-r4 View in LinkedIn

Ben Jennings on Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the supreme court – cartoon https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2018/oct/07/ben-jennings-on-brett-kavanaughs-confirmation-to-the-supreme-court-cartoon?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other View in LinkedIn

LATERAL MOVE. "To the best of our knowledge, these eukaryotic-like domains have never before been reported in packaged bacteriophages and their phylogeny, distribution and sequence diversity imply lateral transfers between bacteriophage/prophage and animal genomes." https://lnkd.in/dYh3-r4 View in LinkedIn

EVOLUTION OF DEATH FROM IMMORTALITY. "The above results thus support our hypothesis that originally immortal organisms evolve into mortal organisms by acquiring a new genetic program for autonomous death." http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.657.723&rep=rep1&type=pdf View in LinkedIn

HIJACKED GENES. "We suggest that the evolution of these eukaryotic protein domains in bacteriophage WO parallels the evolution of eukaryotic genes in canonical eukaryotic viruses, namely those commandeered for viral life cycle adaptations." Curiously, skipping strict domains. https://lnkd.in/dYh3-r4 View in LinkedIn