title: Horizontal transfer - imperative mission of acellular life forms,Acytota.
abstract: Acytotais a kingdom of life covering satellites, plasmids, transposable elements, viroids and viruses, all outside the conventional tree of life but satisfying most life definitions. This review focuses on some aspects ofAcytota, their "genomes" and life styles, the dominance of transposable elements and their evolutionary influence on other life forms in order to vindicate theAcytotaas a life kingdom no more polyphyletic than other kingdoms and its members no more parasitic than other life forms.
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Developmental Genetics, Institute of Biophysics, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic , Brno, Czech Republic.
authors.forename: Eduard
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Kejnovsky
authors.affiliation: Genome Diversity Center, Institute of Evolution, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel , Haifa, Israel.
authors.forename: Edward N
authors.initials: EN
authors.lastname: Trifonov
keywords: DNA and RNA traffic; definition of life; horizontal gene transfer; origin of life; satellite DNA; transposable element; virus