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If viruses did not exist, could anyone have conjured them up?
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Say...what about those strange membrane vesicles or blebs from Pseudomonas aeruginosa that have been demonstrated to carry genetic material between bacterial cells?
Renelli M, Matias V, Lo RY, Beveridge TJ. (2004). "DNA-containing membrane vesicles of Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1 and their genetic transformation potential." Microbiology. 150:2161-2169.
This is a very cool paper, and I wonder if others have followed up on it. No capsid proteins needed there! All a transposable element needs to do is somehow get itself located at the site of "bleb" formation!
Such a mechanism would make the evolution of "viruses" much easier!
Posted by: Mark O. Martin | July 27, 2007 at 05:27 PM