Inevitability of the emergence and persistence of genetic parasites caused by evolutionary instability of parasite-free states

ABSTRACT: Genetic parasites, including viruses and mobile genetic elements, are ubiquitous among cellular life forms, and moreover, are the most abundant biological entities on earth that harbor the bulk of the genetic diversity. Here we examine simple thought experiments to demonstrate that both th...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Koonin, Eugene V., Wolf, Yuri I., Katsnelson, Mikhail I.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2017
Materias:
Opinion
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5715634/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29202832
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13062-017-0202-5
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author Koonin, Eugene V.
Wolf, Yuri I.
Katsnelson, Mikhail I.
author_facet Koonin, Eugene V.
Wolf, Yuri I.
Katsnelson, Mikhail I.
author_sort Koonin, Eugene V.
collection PubMed
description ABSTRACT: Genetic parasites, including viruses and mobile genetic elements, are ubiquitous among cellular life forms, and moreover, are the most abundant biological entities on earth that harbor the bulk of the genetic diversity. Here we examine simple thought experiments to demonstrate that both the emergence of parasites in simple replicator systems and their persistence in evolving life forms are inevitable because the putative parasite-free states are evolutionarily unstable. REVIEWERS: This article has been reviewed by Yitzhak Pilpel, Bojan Zagrovic, and Eric van Nimwegen.
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spelling pubmed-57156342017-12-08 Inevitability of the emergence and persistence of genetic parasites caused by evolutionary instability of parasite-free states Koonin, Eugene V. Wolf, Yuri I. Katsnelson, Mikhail I. Biol Direct Opinion ABSTRACT: Genetic parasites, including viruses and mobile genetic elements, are ubiquitous among cellular life forms, and moreover, are the most abundant biological entities on earth that harbor the bulk of the genetic diversity. Here we examine simple thought experiments to demonstrate that both the emergence of parasites in simple replicator systems and their persistence in evolving life forms are inevitable because the putative parasite-free states are evolutionarily unstable. REVIEWERS: This article has been reviewed by Yitzhak Pilpel, Bojan Zagrovic, and Eric van Nimwegen. BioMed Central 2017-12-04 /pmc/articles/PMC5715634/ /pubmed/29202832 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13062-017-0202-5 Text en © The Author(s). 2017 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Opinion
Koonin, Eugene V.
Wolf, Yuri I.
Katsnelson, Mikhail I.
Inevitability of the emergence and persistence of genetic parasites caused by evolutionary instability of parasite-free states
title Inevitability of the emergence and persistence of genetic parasites caused by evolutionary instability of parasite-free states
title_full Inevitability of the emergence and persistence of genetic parasites caused by evolutionary instability of parasite-free states
title_fullStr Inevitability of the emergence and persistence of genetic parasites caused by evolutionary instability of parasite-free states
title_full_unstemmed Inevitability of the emergence and persistence of genetic parasites caused by evolutionary instability of parasite-free states
title_short Inevitability of the emergence and persistence of genetic parasites caused by evolutionary instability of parasite-free states
title_sort inevitability of the emergence and persistence of genetic parasites caused by evolutionary instability of parasite-free states
topic Opinion
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5715634/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29202832
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13062-017-0202-5
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