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.

Re:chimps to humans?

[suss]

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

Well, the scientists are still not sure about Michael and JonKatz concerning that...

Viruses Instrumental to Evolution?

[$rtbl_this]

Does this mean that Outlook will eventually evolve into a secure MUA?

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:transposons

[PD]

Almost 150 years later, those drawings are still in most textbooks, cited as evidence for evolution.

Let's get rid of *your* lie. The idea that embryonic development is evidence for evolution was abandoned by science a very long time ago. I can only believe that you either don't know any better, or you are deliberately making things up.

Evolution is a fact, that's well established. All debate about evolution is about how it happened.

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:Book written on this

[Bonker]

Damn, and there I thought I had a good idea for a Sci-fi story until I read this and found that someone had already beat me to it.

Still, it's an interesting idea to contemplate:

Aliens/Deities come down and notice some pre-hominid primates.

"Boy, these guys got potential, but not a lot. Why don't we KICK 'EM UP A NOTCH! BAM!"

Okay, sorry. I should be shot for the gratuitous catch phrase.

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.

This is good news.

[Mt._Honkey]

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.

Re:Evolution???

[t]

wow you missed that point completely. Lets use some logic shall we? First of all, it is pretty damn hard to travel around without eyes. Therefore it would not be a silly expectation that the eyes developed long before humans started globe trotting. Hence the quite reasonable expectation that people have the same type of eyes. (Not that they are exactly the same, color varies widely for example.)

And different races do not end up in the same place by chance. When people live in an area long enough, certain changes are quite common in order to better cope with the environment. Skin color is one of those.

The purpose of the mule example, which you did not even bother to research at all, is that they exist at all considering their parents have differening dna lengths. And no, a mule is NOT a mutation, merely an offspring, an unsuccessful offspring, which is NOT uncommon in evolution. Evolution is NOT a direct path to success. Evolution is trial and error. The mule is an error obviously since it is sterile.

Look, it is obvious that you know very little about what you are claiming is bunk. If you truly wish to argue against something then you must know more about the material then the people you are arguing with. That does not mean you have to believe it, but merely that you know it.

sinfully yours, t.