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EXOGENES. "The capture and functional assimilation of exogenous viral genes may represent an important force in the evolution of eukaryotes." http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/11/276/ View in LinkedIn

REPETITIVE ALU GENOMIC SEQUENCES. "An Alu element is a short stretch of DNA originally characterized by the action of the Alu (Arthrobacter luteus) restriction endonuclease. Alu elements of different kinds occur in large numbers in primate genomes. In fact, Alu elements are the most abundant transposable elements in the human genome. Alu insertions have been implicated in several inherited human diseases and in various forms of cancer." https://lnkd.in/ew-tScK View in LinkedIn

GUT MICROBIOME. "You are going to see people manipulating individual bacteria species in someone’s gut with a bacteriophage before too long, because it’s not very hard to do." The gut Microbiome is the target of future therapies for a wide range of disorders. It's all about gut ecology and balance. Watch this space. https://lnkd.in/eaHyvSK View in LinkedIn

PARASITIC GENES. "There are Over 2 Million Copy Machines in your Genes, but only 80-100 still work (they are all LINE-1s). These TE “copy machines” drove evolution for 150 million years, but have largely become non-functional in humans. However, those that are working can still copy themselves (LINE-1s) or copy other transposable elements that were never able to copy themselves (i.e. were parasitic transposable elements). The Alu and SVA transposable elements are the “parasitic TEs”. https://lnkd.in/eqiWug7 View in LinkedIn

PHAGE MATH. "There may be as many as 10(30) tailed phage globally. For people who like their numbers written out, that’s 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. If you were to gather them all up and weigh them, they would outweigh the world population of elephants by a thousand-fold or more." https://lnkd.in/eBxpUF7 View in LinkedIn

PARASITIC GENOME. "17% of the human genome is comprised of ‘parasitic’, repeated DNA segments called LINE-1 elements. Some of these, occasionally, copy themselves and move to new locations in the genome. More rarely, they will aberrantly pick up a piece of adjacent, non-LINE-1 DNA and copy that to a new site: this is known as LINE-1 transduction. There are 850,000 fragments of LINEs left over from evolution, although only about 7,000 of these are intact." https://lnkd.in/eqiWug7 View in LinkedIn

ALTERNATIVE PROMOTOR. "The most important role of HERVs today has nothing to do with transcription or translation. Instead, it is the role of the “fossil promoter”, called the “LTR” (long terminal repeat), which can function as an “alternative promoter” to activate nearby human genes which is the most important function of HERVs in our DNA." https://lnkd.in/eqiWug7 View in LinkedIn

REMNANT SEQUENCES. "Retroviruses invaded the genome of human ancestors over the course of millions of years, yet these viruses generally have been inactivated during evolution, with only remnants of these infectious sequences remaining in the human genome." https://lnkd.in/eqiWug7 View in LinkedIn

FOSSIL VIRUSES. "There are 98,000 fragments of leftover “fossil viruses” in our genomes (HERVs) but none are capable of “self-copying” themselves. In rodents, however, there are many mouse endogenous retroviral elements (MERVs) that are “active” and capable of retrotransposition." https://lnkd.in/eqiWug7 View in LinkedIn

NON-CODING DNA. "Over the past decade, however, scientists have realized that these regions incorporate decisive higher-order regulatory functions. Within the human genome sequences are only 3% coding for proteins and 97% non-coding ones. But these 3% of the protein-coding sequences match with those of the mouse by up to 99%. Highly developed genomes among mammals contain a nearly identical protein-coding vocabulary." https://lnkd.in/e-pJFM6 View in LinkedIn