Life's a continuum of organisms - from independently mobile bits of genomes, through viruses, to organelles, to barely non-organellar symbiotes, to cells. That are mostly not independent either.
@zaminiqbal.bsky.socialMadness. A bacterium with a 10kb genome, lost replication initiation, translation.., relies on symbiotic host.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Convergent extreme reductive evolution in ancient planthopper symbioses - Nature Communications
Symbiotic bacteria can have exceedingly small genomes. This study finds that ancient bacterial symbionts of planthoppers have repeatedly evolved the smallest known genomes, losing most biosynthetic fu...