3 ms·
That's pretty amazing. I'm guessing DNA compactness is a survival advantage for viruses, and that's how this emerged? Is gene overlap common in other species?
by GuiA 12y ago
That's pretty amazing. I'm guessing DNA compactness is a survival advantage for viruses, and that's how this emerged? Is gene overlap common in other species?
- jonmrodriguez 12y agoGene overlap is extremely rare actually! When phiX174 was first discovered, some researchers wondered if such a complexly intertwined system could even have evolved naturally, or if it might suggest that the virus was hand-engineered: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1979Icar...38..148Y http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1979Icar...38..148Y
- wamatt 12y agoI would think the opposite may be true, given that compressed information tends to be more sensitive to error, than uncompressed.
- TazeTSchnitzel 12y agoRedundancy helps resistance to error, yeah. This thing could be quite easily damaged in transmission.