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

Re:chimps to humans?

[R.Caley]

It depends on your POV. Some would class humans as a species of chimp, in which case the common ancestor would be a kind fo chimp too.

At the moment the best-known retrovirus is HIV

[dpilot]

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?

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

[zenyu]

So what is HIV doing to human evolution?

One of our characteristics as humans is that we try to assign narratives to everything. This is a great thing because it forces us to come up with theories and then through discussion refine them. But sometimes there isn't a reason, as with random processes like evolution. You didn't say there was a reason for HIV, so I won't belabor the point.

It's still a good question, it looks like it has redirected some of the hive's mind to figuring out retro-viruses and also to figuring out biological data storage and manufacturing devices (DNA & RNA). This is probably better use of medical researchers than a random trial and error attack on cancer.

As far as biological evolution, this will happen to an extent. But not so much really, remember the plague, black death? Well less than 5% of Europeans has any immunity. We discovered hand washing and rat control before it really reworked the genome. Condoms and medicine will do the same for HIV.

Many large cats do have a HIV like virus that once decimated their population and for the last 100,000 years have evolved to fight it off, though with a dimished life span. We're not gonna wait that long for a solution...

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

[dpilot]

> But sometimes there isn't a reason, as with random processes like evolution. You didn't say there was a reason for HIV, so I won't belabor the point.

I wasn't attempting to assign or invoke any sort of reason, only wondering about long-term effects. Even though I later mentioned Darwin's Radio I wasn't meaning to wander out on that branch.

> We discovered hand washing and rat control before it really reworked the genome. Condoms and medicine will do the same for HIV.

So maybe HIV will really alter our perception and application of religion and some political systems. Right now it appears that religious conservatism is the greatest obstacle proper education about sex and HIV risks, and promoting the use of condoms. South Africa has the highest proportion of AIDS, and at least part of the reason is/was political. The government set up a situation with residence in one area, and jobs in another. Workers were on a weekly/monthly commute, and AIDS spread like wildfire through the prostitutes.

So maybe religious and political opinions will need to be the biggest changes.

> We're not gonna wait that long for a solution...

I have an ugly feeling that at some point, social-unrest-driven solutions are going to be forced on us, and some of them will be decidedly sub-optimal. Unfortunately, we had time to develop better solutions, and squandered it because of religious/political reasons.

Re:This is good news.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm kind of one of those people that believe that human evolution has stopped. One key component to evolution is "selective pressure" so that poor genes kill you off before you breed (or breed a lot). In modern human society we protect the weak so that almost everyone gets a chance to breed. If you watch Jerry Springer you'll start to wonder if only the crap is breeding while the rest of us are too busy. 50 years ago Down Syndrome, a pretty significant genetic anomaly, killed people while they were children. Today people with down syndrome are living long lives. Other genetic disorders are getting the same help from our technological evolution. I'm not trying to get all Hitler-ish on society because I'd be on the elimination list for genetic problems, but until we start a massive selective breeding program (which isn't going to happen) or allow technology to advance without excessive laws based on superstitions, our genome is going to be filled with cruft.

An acquaintance of my family was told by a genetic councilor that if she and her husband had children there was an extremely high probability of the child having spina bifida, but they decided that this expert whom they sought out was full of crap and had a kid anyway. "Surprize!" the kid has it and is severly disabled and will always need lots of medical care and will never be able to have a job due to mental and physical disabilities that border on a vegatative state. Thus two people that could have given an adopted child a good life, will not be able to care for or afford another child because of the one they decided to have despite the risks. We can't stop people from breeding haphazardly so we need to be able to fix inherited "mistakes" before or after birth and we're not going to be able to do that if we put legislation in the way of every new potential advancement because we might be "playing god." Face it we've been playing god for 1000s of years. We "invented" dogs, horses, cows, corn, and tons of other species via selective breeding and recently via direct genetic manipulations (ie Spider-goats and insulin producing bacteria).

So although I think that this reseach and its findings are amazing, I don't think that it will do much to further evolve the human species since we've all but removed ourselves from any selective pressures.

- One American that's pissed about the poor Math and Science educational requirements and ever decreasing separation of church and state.

Re:transposons

[young-earth]

I'm very glad you agree that it has been abandoned by responsible scientists. However I think you'd best get educated on what is in the textbooks. In the last two years major college intro bio textbooks have been published and are in heavy use, textbooks that still contain Haeckel's drawings. Do you need the ISBN's for them?

HIV causes AIDS a myth?

[solferino]

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 :

"If there is evidence that HIV causes AIDS, there should be scientific documents which either singly or collectively demonstrate that fact, at least with a high probability. There is no such document."

Dr. Kary Mullis, Biochemist, 1993 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

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

The response to the first major critique of the HIV theory, by Dr Peter Duesberg, professor of molecular biology at the University of California at Berkeley, was bewilderment, followed by fury. Duesberg had been voted Californian Scientist of the Year for his discoveries in the field of retroviruses (of which HIV is supposed to be one). He argued in 1987 that HIV could not be doing the damage attributed to it, because it was so difficult to find in the body, even in a person dying of AIDS. He postulated that an explosion in the use of recreational drugs during the 1970s was probably the main cause of AIDS. He was first ignored and then pilloried for persisting with his views. He lost a $ 350,000 "outstanding investigator" award and became an embarrassment to his university, which, while unable to fire him, reduced him to chairing its annual picnic committee.

The past 10 years have shown Duesberg to have been right on several counts. He stated that HIV could not kill immune cells, that AIDS would not become a heterosexual epidemic and that the anti-viral drug AZT would kill rather than cure. On all three issues, the evidence has gone his way.

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.

Re:A rational discussion

[Lurkingrue]

1) Duesberg was listened to, and his ideas were proven wrong. His statements on HIV and AIDS causation have almost universally been shown to be false. He has not been "showered with money" or given media attention because his theories on AIDS are repeatedly proven incorrect.

2) When AIDS was initially reported, there was plenty of confusion in the media. People were linking it to being Haitian, with being gay, with living on the coasts of the US...and a dozen other things.

3) None of the people you mentioned seem to have anything to do with AIDS research. None of them has anything published in medical journals about such research. They don't appear to have training in areas like molecular biology or virology (one is a semiotician and a toxicologist!?!). They seem to have no stated theories on why AIDS takes place, or why HIV could not be the causative agent for AIDS. I have no reason to think they are "experts" on AIDS in any way.

4) 5,500 random people with some scientific training is not a significant number when compared with the number of experts who espouse the retroviral theory. Additionally, I never asserted that the names on your list were fake or forged, merely that they could be, and that it was entirely irrelevent.

5) Your classification of antiretrovirals as "extremely toxic drugs" is disingenuous and smells of trolling. This is equally true of your statement on chemotherapy, and your suggestion that the medical establishment is espousing harming patients.

6) Your glossing over of activist groups like Act Up! or GMHC that would love to find a cover-up in AIDS research only further classifies your posts as trolling.

I'm wasting to much time on this -- you don't want to learn enough about the subject to make an informed decision, but you doubt what is almost universally accepted among experts to be true. You say you don't trust people just because their deemed "experts", but you are going to consider alternative theories to the retroviral postulate because the people questioning it are experts?