BIOL 1101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 52: Viral Evolution, Mimivirus, Obligate Parasite

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We can identify birds and mammals as different groups, and we rightly expect that bird dna will be most similar to other bird. Dna, and mammal dna will be most similar to other mammal dna. However, viral dna and rna is usually more similar to the dna/rna of the host it infects rather than to the dna/rna of other viruses. This implies that viruses originated independently many times and are not related to each other. In other words, while we believe there was a single ancestral cell, there probably was no single ancestral virus. The accepted theory on how viruses originated says that they came after cells, and resulted when dna and rna released from cells became coated with protein and became infective. According to this theory, viruses are derived from cells, and are not in any way representative of pre-cellular life. An alternative theory centers on a very large dna virus called a mimivirus, that infects amoebae.

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