Ancient Virus Gave Wasps Their Sting

By Rachel Zelkowitz
ScienceNOW Daily News
12 February 2009

There's no consent for these surrogate parents. Tens of thousands of wasp species
lay their eggs inside caterpillars, injecting toxins that paralyze the hosts and allow
their young to feast on the innards with impunity. Researchers have long wondered
what exactly these toxins are and where they came from. The answers, a new
genetic analysis reveals, have to do with a virus that infected wasps millions of
years ago.
The first clue to the nature of the wasp's toxins came in the 1970s. Using electron
microscopy, researchers found that they consisted of protein-encased, double-
stranded DNA particles that were produced in the wasps' ovaries. Because they
resemble viruses, the toxins were christened polydnaviruses




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מנגנון מעניין. האמת שכל נושא המקור הקדום של טוקסינים הוא נושא מאוד מעניין ומאוד קשה לפיצוח, בעיקר בגלל השונות הגדולה שלהם. אבל ידועים כיום לא מעט טוקסינים שנוצרו מחלבונים "רגילים".

ואם כבר מדברים על עוקץ, כדאי לראות איך ומדוע חלק מהחרקים והארכנידה בעלי אברי ארס קדמיים וחלק עם אחוריים.

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics

"After the uprising of the 17th of June the Secretary of the Writers Union had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
stating that the people had forfeited the confidence of the government and could win it back only by redoubled efforts.

Would it not be easier in that case for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?" -Bertolt Brecht

I remember very vividly, a few months after the famous pacifist resolution at the Oxford Union visiting Germany and having a talk with a prominent leader of the young Nazis. He was asking about this pacifist motion and I tried to explain it to him. There was an ugly gleam in his eye when he said, "The fact is that you English are soft". Then I realized that the world enemies of peace might be the pacifists - Robert Hamilton Bernays -