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There are three main hypotheses that aim to explain the origins of viruses: [7] Regressive hypothesis Viruses may have once been small cells that parasitised larger cells. Over time, genes not required by their parasitism were lost. The bacteria rickettsia and chlamydia are living cells that, like viruses, can reproduce only inside host cells ...
The viral eukaryogenesis hypothesis posits that eukaryotes are composed of three ancestral elements: a viral component that became the modern nucleus; a prokaryotic cell (an archaeon according to the eocyte hypothesis) which donated the cytoplasm and cell membrane of modern cells; and another prokaryotic cell (here bacterium) that, by endocytosis, became the modern mitochondrion or chloroplast.
Endogenosymbiosis is an evolutionary process, proposed by the evolutionary and environmental biologist Roberto Cazzolla Gatti, in which "gene carriers" (viruses, retroviruses and bacteriophages) and symbiotic prokaryotic cells (bacteria or archaea) could share parts or all of their genomes in an endogenous symbiotic relationship with their hosts.
The coevolution, or "virus-first" hypothesis, conflicts with the definition of viruses, because viruses depend on host cells. [ 20 ] [ 21 ] Also, viruses are recognised as ancient, and to have origins that pre-date the divergence of life into the three domains . [ 22 ]
Most virus species have virions too small to be seen with an optical microscope and are one-hundredth the size of most bacteria. The origins of viruses in the evolutionary history of life are still unclear. Some viruses may have evolved from plasmids, which are pieces of DNA that can move between cells. Other viruses may have evolved from bacteria.
Viral phylodynamics is the study of how epidemiological, immunological, and evolutionary processes act and potentially interact to shape viral phylogenies. [1] Since the term was coined in 2004, research on viral phylodynamics has focused on transmission dynamics in an effort to shed light on how these dynamics impact viral genetic variation.
The sizes of viruses determined using this new microscope fitted in well with those estimated by filtration experiments. Viruses were expected to be small, but the range of sizes came as a surprise. Some were only a little smaller than the smallest known bacteria, and the smaller viruses were of similar sizes to complex organic molecules. [14]
Gamma phage, an example of virus particles (visualised by electron microscopy) Virology is the scientific study of biological viruses.It is a subfield of microbiology that focuses on their detection, structure, classification and evolution, their methods of infection and exploitation of host cells for reproduction, their interaction with host organism physiology and immunity, the diseases they ...