This episode is with Eugene Koonin.

He is a highly respected computational biologist who has made significant contributions to the fields of evolutionary biology, genomics, and bioinformatics. Eugene is a distinguished investigator at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). His research interests include the evolution of viruses and the development of new computational methods for analyzing large-scale genomic data. Here we talk about origins and evolution of viruses, major transitions in evolution, diversity of viruses, and tools to study viruses.

Guest info:

Website: ⁠https://irp.nih.gov/pi/eugene-koonin

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Timestamps:

00:00:00 Introduction

00:01:03 How do we define viruses?

00:04:12 Major transitions in evolution and viruses

00:10:15 Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) and its virome

00:15:50 Diversity of viruses

00:26:40 Multiple origins of viruses

00:28:56 Origin of viruses

00:35:21 Viruses and replicators

00:38:11 Selfish elements as information carriers

00:40:01 Nature of selfish elements

00:42:45 Why selfish elements emerge?

00:47:46 Membranes of viruses

00:53:00 Connection between information and compartments

00:56:10 Replication strategies of selfish elements

00:58:33 Strategies of viruses to organize and replicate their genomes

01:00:18 Genomes of giant viruses

01:02:56 Small or Giant viruses: which came first?

01:03:34 Tools to study phylogenetics of viruses

01:06:40 Can we identify the host of a virus from the genome and vice versa?

01:08:39 Minimum number of genes required for the survival

01:12:55 Understanding the complexity of alien life forms

01:14:31 Last Bacterial Common Ancestor (LBCA) and Last Archaeal Common Ancestor (LACA)

01:18:56 Evolution of Last Eukaryotic Common Ancestor (LECA) from bacterial and archaea

01:23:02 Endosymbiosis in nature

01:26:15 Bacterial and Archaea emdosymbiosis effects on compartments

01:28:27 Size differences in bacteria and archaea

01:29:33 Future of phylogeny of viruses

01:31:20 Thank you!