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The Human Genome: More Viruses than Genes?
jmulvey writes "A new University of Georgia study shows that most of the human genome contains a huge historical record of retroviruses. The study adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting that viruses were instrumental in the evolution of chimps into humans."
Once again my post is going to sound like a troll when its not ment to,but isn't this old news. Now don't get me wrong I love UGA (Go Dawgs!), but I remember reading about this in high school. Maybe the story is that there is so much evidence, and not that its a new idea. End Ramble
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Just a detail: humans are not theorized to have evolved form chimps. Rather, chimps and humans evolved from a common ancestor.
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A person of moderate zeal
Does this mean that Outlook will eventually evolve into a secure MUA?
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genomes are continually evolving new regulatory mechanisms to silence the mutagenic effects associated with the replication of
these elements which, in turn, place selective pressure on the elements to evolve mechanisms to escape these controls. The result
is an internal drive mechanism to increase biological complexity.
A mechanism that explains periods of lots of mutations followed by stable periods. It also allows for wildly divergent traits! I'd better incorporate this into my next EA!
anyway, the idea of latent viruses remaining in the genome is a rather old idea, most notably for transposons (aka 'jumping genes') which seem to randomly re-arrange themselves within the genomes and 'jump' from one part of a DNA strand to another... also, more recently the idea of viruses actually serving an advantageous purpose for humans has been put forth with the finding of the importance of transposon-like activity in specific instances, such as the HyperVariable region in B-cells (FYI the hypervariable region is a piece of DNA which eventually codes for the binding region of antibodies, which is important for making them recognize foriegn antigens (which will be highly random by nature))... but the point of this paper being that they are/were a driving force for evolution, specifically the evolution of homo which is an interesting, and to the best of my knowledge, new idea.
-tid242
With a few exceptions, secrecy is deeply incompatible with democracy and with science. --Carl Sagan
Computer viruses have been instrumental in the evolution of MS Windows.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Greg Bear wrote a book, _Darwin's Radio_, on this exact subject.
You humarns really think you understand the Genome?
In spite of Microsoft claims to the contrary, open source is helping to cure cancer.
Sagres Discovery (my employer) takes advantage of naturally occuring retroviruses in mice to identify genes that cause cancer. This isn't novel technology (in fact its been around for nearly 20 years), but Sagres has turned it into a high throughput saturation screen with robotics,open source bioinformatics tools, and clustered Linux computing.
The Bioinformatics Open Souce Conference conference was held in Endmonton, Canada last week. In one of many projects moving towards open source standards and information, the National Cancer Institute announced caBIO, an open API for accessing NCI's comprehensive cancer databases.
First entomology, then virology, and finally bioinformatics systems. Bugs follow me wherever I go.
So, I suppose it's true that we aren't like the other mammals, but that we are more like viri. That explains a lot about our impact on the planet as a whole. Perhaps we should reclassify ourselves as viri?
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
what's important with these types of news releases is the main idea, not the details, if you want details you'll have to read the journal publication...
-tid242
With a few exceptions, secrecy is deeply incompatible with democracy and with science. --Carl Sagan
Humans are biological weapons put on earth to infect each other!
Oh wait...
Don't Bogart the fish sticks
yuo = fagot
So what is HIV doing to human evolution?
* In the Darwin's Radio sense, perhaps our genes have looked at our actions, and decided, "It's time for us to go."
* In a punctuated equillibrium sense, I've always heard that evolution through natural selection *really* kicks in when you have 90%-type mortalities. Do we know for sure that the death rate from AIDS is 100%? How about the "sufficient to procreate" rate? Left completely unchecked, would AIDS kill off the human race, or would a tiny fraction of us evolve past it, and their descendents inherit the Earth?
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
If you haven't, read the article. It says that these retroviruses have been a significant driving force for evolution.
Some people claim that evolution has stopped in humans, but this shows us that maybe it hasn't. Maybe through more retroviruses getting into the system, and this "giant game of chess" being played in our DNA, we will continue to evolve. For better or for worse, I don't know, but I see it as a major chance for improvement.
Don't Bogart the fish sticks
public ignorance is a BIG, BIG problem in this country (and alas, worldwide), the intellectually 'elite' are advancing farther and further from the general public, i agree, and i feel that there's no plausable nor excusable reason for this, not in this nation, nor in this world, nor for this species...
my $2*10^(-2)
-tid242
With a few exceptions, secrecy is deeply incompatible with democracy and with science. --Carl Sagan
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AJ posting anonymously so I don't lose karma
Okay, IANAB (I am not a biologist) The mitochondria (essentially the power plants of our cells) were actually an origionally independent life form. Sometime very early in our evolution they found themselves inside our cells and have been integrated in as a necessary part. I could be mistaken but I believe they are essentially inherited purely from the mother as they just stick with the egg and the number coming in with the sperm is trivial. They also have their own DNA.
I stole this Sig
It goes against the first and second laws of thermo-dynamics and is still a theory, and unproven in these hundred or so years since its inception.
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The truth is bigger than your beliefs, your opinion of truth has no impact on reality. - rtaft (5.15.2002)
It is interesting, this step of evolution.
If you have ever seen the matrix, and caught the ramble of one of the agents about how humans are a virus, spreading out and distroying the earth for it's own good.... it is true. And now to think (although this isn't a new and fresh idea) that humans took that step because of a virus... could some of the disposition of that virus or any virus effect our behavior?
Identify an ancient retro virus that only affected french people.
Find a trigger.
Release it and kill the french and anyone that goes near them.
If you haven't read Greg Bear's "Darwin's Radio" book you should. It weaves an interesting story in exactly this area that uses punctuated equilibrium, HERVs, speciation triggered by retroviruses, global disease epidemics, and its set (partially) in Seattle too :-)
An interesting story set on top of some interesting scientific speculation.
A lot of human illnesses stem from our close proximity to animals. If I recall, the flu virus is supposed to have originally affected horses (or is it pigs? it doesn't matter for the example), and then the virus eventually evolved to affect humans, because we were always around the horses, and presented an opportunity for the virus to adapt to a new enviroment (us).
,myself included, are mischaracterizing the nature of viruses affect on evolution as explained by the researchers. It's not that the viruses cause any benign change per se, but that the body mutates to defend against them, thus increasing complexity of the organism.
Your mentioning the feline "HIV" makes me wonder if maybe the AIDS shouldn't be blamed on monkeys, but on cats.
On an unrelated note, I've often wondered if there are any viruses out there that are good for us, sort of like the symbiotic bacteria in our stomaches that help us digest, and that help yogurt marketeers. Instead of making one sick, wouldn't it be cool if there was a virus you could catch that made you healthier.
And as a side note, I believe most people
Weird stuff when you consider that this is delving into the nature of life itself.
What am I, half French, half Russian, one quarter virus? (Yes that adds up to more than one, they're not mutually exclusive sets.)
And it's kind of interesting that people aren't talking about the ramifications of this idea regarding computer viruses.
Does the existance of computer viruses ultimately benefit us, by forcing the development (in this case entirely conscious, as opposed to biological evolution) of more complex computer systems.
evanchik.net
a link to some material on whether the widely-spread convention that there is a retrovirus called HIV that causes AIDS is true.
a quote from that site :
this page on the site links to the best introductory articles on the 'virus myth'
an excerpt from one of the articles on the site
note to moderators : please note that the assertions against the conventional thinking on HIV -> AIDS are being made by respected scientists as shown in the above two excerpts. This comment is not made as flamebait or as a troll. The ideal of science is informed debate, not willful dismissal of dissenting opinion.
You bring up an interesting point, but its pretty well established that Duesberg & other "non-retroviral" theorists are wrong on many counts here.
First of all, Duesberg's claim that "poverty, malnutrition and parasitic and tropical diseases" cause AIDS in third world populations, while "recreational drugs, irradiation and AZT" and nutrition are responsible for the syndrome in the Western world are patently false -- disproven repeatedly. AZT and other anti-retrovirals have been shown to increase lifespan and decrease symptomatology in AIDS patients. HIV is a heterosexual epidemic in many places, and viral loads do seem to correlate with diminished T-cell numbers.
Other "non-viral" theories of AIDS put forth, such as Papadopoulos-Eleopoulos' "oxidizing agent" theory have been equally disproven. It seems that, if there is an viable, alternative theory to the retroviral HIV of AIDS, nobody has presented it yet.
Secondly, it would be very difficult to demonstrate that the retroviral HIV theory of AIDS completely fulfills all the requirements of Koch's postulate in a human model (in fact, it would be an immoral and unethical act to test it this way), but the evidence is pretty strong in the support of it. People who show no evidence of HIV do not have AIDS (although similar syndromes exist). As far as I know, all people with AIDS have been shown to have HIV infection. Furthermore, people who have had AIDS and have begun antiretroviral therapy have shown dramatic regression of symptoms, while no other therapies (directed or not) seem to be effective.
The "non-viral" people -- Duesberg supporters in particular -- tend to argue against strawmen, using old data, and demanding that the HIV camp disprove negatives.
I'm perfectly willing to have a rational discussion about this with anyone, and I'm perfectly willing to listen to skepticism -- that's what makes good science happen. However, just giving names and stating beliefs isn't a persuasive argument. You've given me no substantive reason to doubt what I currently believe.
I know of Duesberg and read his papers on this matter, and I don't agree with his conclusions. I know of Mullins, and think he's a genius, but even a genius isn't infallible. In fact, I think it ironic that his own PCR has disproven one of Duesberg's famous early claims: that HIV is undetectable in some AIDS patients.
Listing names isn't convincing without a reason behind those folks' beliefs. I can look at those names, and still not have any idea why they would be skeptical of the retroviral hypothesis. You list 5,500 names but I expect that 550,000 (or more) scientifically trained folk would take the other side of the argument. Names don't mean anything in good science, nor do numbers. I don't even know if those names are real. Facts and hypothesis-testing do mean something, for they can be tested and put through trials.
I've stated in my prior post why I think Duesberg and others who deny the retroviral theory are wrong. I've stated why I think HIV comes very, very close to fulfilling Koch's postulate (even though we'er dealing with a viral agent, not a bacterial one, here). I've pointed out that almost everything Duesberg has said initially about HIV/AIDS turned out to be untrue. I can even direct you to a relatively recent paper here that gives a good basic overview why HIV seems to fit the bill as the causative agent for AIDS.
So far, nothing I've seen has conflicted with those points I made, and until they do, I really have no reason to question the HIV/retroviral theory of AIDS causation...And I have to wonder the specifics behind why you do.
ok i've now had a brief look at the paper you linked to - it's by tim teeter RN (RN = registered nurse) - is this really the best you can do? - i give you papers by people with 20+ years in the exact field of virology or nobel scientists in related fields and you come back with a paper by a registered nurse?!! - furthermore not even a disinterested party but a member of the AIDS lobby group - i quote - Tim Teeter is Associate Director of Treatment Support and Publications at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. - my scepticism only grows...
ok some brief responses to material from the paper
AIDS is defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as the presence of a positive HIV antibody test and one or more of the illnesses known as opportunistic infections (OIs) or a CD4 cell count below 200 cells/mm3.
so even though AIDS was on the scene first it appears to have now been redefined to include a positive result to the 'HIV antibody test' - summary : something is documented as Acquired Immunde Deficiency Syndrome - a hypothesis is put forward that this is caused by something called HIV amd all dissenting opinion is crushed - the originally defined AIDS is redefined in terms of the later 'discovered' HIV - isn't this a gross breach of empiricism?
this is the very first sentence - however two paragraphs down the author flatly contradicts his own definition of AIDS i.e. requiring a positive result to the 'HIV' test
The vast majority of people with AIDS in resource-poor countries have not had an HIV antibody test; even in developed countries, not all people with AIDS have had viral load tests. Those who have had viral load tests showing nondetectable virus generally have no additional tests to confirm the presence of HIV genetic material.
i won't go on - as i said before the burden of proof is on the originators of a theory and not on the sceptics - this paper you've given me is doing a very bad job of convincing me with major logical inconsitencies in it's first three paragraphs
That's not "the best I can do", but since you said you weren't an expert in the field, I would link a basic review. The paper was an OVERVIEW and not a paper with original work. Did you actually try and read it? The papers that you originally cited were PROVEN WRONG. The original papers that contradict your "nobel prize winners" and "virologist" are cited in the article.
And, anyway, Teeter's credentials are as valid as the ones you've brought up with your names -- moreso since he's probably done more AIDS work than the three you mentioned.
Do you have any argument with the actual TEXT of the paper? Howabout the citations in it -- do you doubt the research done? Or are you just making an ad hominem attack?
Do you want me to give you a bibliography of papers backing up the belief that HIV causes AIDS? Would you read them and understand them if I did?