Do you know of any eukaryotic virus that has a tail, and, if not, why do you suppose there aren’t any?
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There might be some evolutionary advantage to being endocytosed by the target cell instead of requiring a tail to attach and inject genetic material. Perhaps assembly of viral tails was an evolutionary pressure that drove the first eukaryotes towards spatial arrangement of transcription and translation. Tails work for viruses like T7 phage because transcription and translation both occur in the cytosol of prokaryotes. Separation of the two processes could have been a defense against viral assembly.
Elio replies:
Nice point, Marco. Who knows, you my even be right!
Posted by: Marco | January 31, 2014 at 09:34 AM