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CONSORTIA AND ASSORTED DEFECTIVES. "Interacting consortia of endogenous viruses and their defectives serve as actual key regulators in host cells. They cooperate as complementary tools and act as major sources of “variation”, i.e. adaptational genetic change and genetic innovation in host organisms." https://lnkd.in/eN3vAgM View in LinkedIn

CODING AND NON-CODING. "During the first five decades of molecular biology it was a common concept that DNA mainly stored the information from which protein-coded sequences are translated. In contrast to this, increasing amounts of knowledge suggested that the largest parts of the genome do not code for proteins but serve as regulatory elements." Derived from mobile elements of viruses. https://lnkd.in/eN3vAgM View in LinkedIn

NEW INFO #1. "Barbara McClintock’s thoughts and experiments found mobile genetic elements that actively influence the shape of genomes and their internal interactions." Jumping genes, retrotransposons (etc) got a hugely negative reception from fellow scientists when first proposed but landed McClintoch a well-deserved Nobel prize. https://lnkd.in/eUYvi8e View in LinkedIn

NEW DATA CHALLENGES. Old assumptions about molecular biology are challenged by new information that has accumulated in recent decades. A shift in paradigm significantly alters the Darwinian view of evolution that we have held for decades. The following seven points are key pieces of this challenge to old thinking. And of course, there are those who resist new thinking. View in LinkedIn

THE DNA WORLD. "The genetic code now also codes for proteins and the protein enzymes form the protein bodies, which we know as cells, cellular parts that organize metabolism, tissues, organs and organisms, all of which we term life from the most primitive last universal common ancestor to human beings." https://lnkd.in/eg6uePF View in LinkedIn

EMERGED GENOTYPE-PHENOTYPE. "RNA world agents: where the genotype is the phenotype. With the split into a RNA world and a DNA world that codes for proteins with a non-repeat genetic syntax the split between the genotype and the phenotype emerged." https://lnkd.in/eg6uePF View in LinkedIn

DNA AS EMERGENT PROPERTY. "Thus the genetic code looks like an emergent property of self-organizing matter and information that underlies natural laws such as thermodynamics, kinetics, atomic structure and their binding forces." https://lnkd.in/eg6uePF View in LinkedIn

BRINKMANSHIP. "More detailed, error-prone RNAs are a resource for generating genetic diversity followed by selection out of cumulative series of error replications. If the error rate is too high, then genetic content gets lost, followed by quasi-species collapse." https://lnkd.in/eg6uePF View in LinkedIn

OLD ASSUMPTION. "For decades it was assumed that if the genetic code represents a context-free universal grammar determined exclusively by natural laws, copying events can form only identical copies of the wild type. If there is any change in such copies it is correct to term them as replication errors. Error replications (mutations) are a key element in explanatory models of the evolutionary origin of genetic diversity, being the ultimate resource for biological selection." https://lnkd.in/eg6uePF View in LinkedIn

VASTNESS FROM SMALLNESS. "The algae represent major producers of calcium carbonate and silica among the world’s biota. Calcification involves the precipitation of CaCO3 from Ca and CO ions. Algal calcification may account for up to half of global oceanic CaCO3 production. Silicification is less widespread among algal groups, which transform dissolved silicate to skeletal material. Diatoms play a key role in marine silica cycling." High carbon sink. https://lnkd.in/eXTtntg View in LinkedIn