Koonin, Eugene V., Tatiana G. Senkevich, and Valerian V. Dolja. “The ancient Virus World and evolution of cells.” Biology direct 1, no. 1 (2006): 1-27.
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Recent advances in genomics of viruses and cellular life forms have greatly stimulated interest in the origins and evolution of viruses and, for the first time, offer an opportunity for a data-driven exploration of the deepest roots of viruses. Here we briefly review the current views of virus evolution and propose a new, coherent scenario that appears to be best compatible with comparative-genomic data and is naturally linked to models of cellular evolution that, from independent considerations, seem to be the most parsimonious among the existing ones.