Co-option (biology)

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages) This article relies largely or entirely on a single source. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please help improve this article by introducing citations to additional sources. Find sources: "Co-option" biology – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (March 2012) This article may lend undue weight to certain ideas, incidents, or controversies. Please help improve it by rewriting it in a balanced fashion that contextualizes different points of view. (March 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this message) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The term co-option refers to the capacity of intracellular parasites to use host-cell proteins to complete their vital cycle.^{[citation needed]} Viruses use this mechanism, as their genome is small.^[1]

It is also used in a different sense to refer to characters that have been exapted.^[2]