Virome
Giant Viruses Are Ancient Living Organisms
14/09/12 13:17 Filed in: Laboratory Equipment
Gustavo Caetano-Anollés at the Univ. of Illinois Crop Sciences and Institute for Genomic Biology and his colleagues completed a study of giant viruses that supports the idea that viruses are ancient living organisms that may have arisen from a fourth branch of life, alongside bacteria, archaea and eukarya. The researchers conducted a census of all the protein folds occurring in more than 1,000 organisms representing bacteria, viruses, the microbes known as archaea and all other living things, and found that the genomes of some giant viruses exceeded the genetic endowments of the simplest bacteria. S. Pelech envisions that giant viruses evolved from invasive bacteria that eventually become mobile parasites that utilized the proteins encoded by their hosts to facilitate their own replication. Consequently, it is not necessary to invoke the existence of a fourth branch of life that predated or co-existed with the three known superkingdoms to explain their ubiquitous presence. Read More...
The Human Collective
21/11/10 21:02 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
The virome in even the feces of identical twins humans vary widely from one another, and from their mothers, in contrast to findings that family members tend to have similar microbiomes. S. pelech points out that the unique resident flora of each person with some 10 trillion bacteria arises from a combination diverse factors, and it largely protects us from pathogenic strains and provide nutrients in a symbiotic relationship. Even within our individual cells, bacterial-like entities known as mitochondria are essential for our good health. Read More...