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."

Comments

chimps to humans?

[HyperbolicParabaloid]

Just a detail: humans are not theorized to have evolved form chimps. Rather, chimps and humans evolved from a common ancestor.

transposons

[tid242]

i don't remember reading about much of the sort in high school, of course you very well could have attended HS more recently than i, or very very likely could have attended a school much better than mine, especially in the science department. but given the conservative nature of high school text driven, in no small part, by the boycotting nature of many 'christian-minded' institutions, i find the latter scenario more probable...

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

Re:Book written on this

[orthogonal]

no.

Darwin's Radio is a poor book with a purely bogus concept of what evolution is.

The central conceit of the book is that the evolution from Neanderthal to human was designed into the genome, in the 'junk' DNA, and set to express itself at some pre-set (designed) time. The story revolves around a further designed evolution from human to a new (and presumably 'better') species.

The central point is that the 'junk' is designed. That's not evolution, but some variant of creationism. It's also implausible crap.

Taken purely as art, the book isn't much good either -- the basic plot is that the evolution of the 'over-man' will occasion much Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. It's not worth wasting time on.

Re:At the moment the best-known retrovirus is HIV

[a_d_white]

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%?

The mortality rate for AIDS (90% vs. 100%) is not issue. For natural selection to be a strong force, it matters how many people in the population are effected by AIDS compared to the frequency of a gene for immunity. If only 5% of the population is immune to AIDS, but <5% of the population has HIV, natural selection won't be strong enough to favor the gene for immunity.

Duesberg & questionable science

[Lurkingrue]

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.