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The Human Genome: More Viruses than Genes?

Posted by michael on from the meme-expression dept.

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."

3 of 118 comments (clear)

  1. chimps to humans? by HyperbolicParabaloid · · Score: 5, Informative

    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
    1. Re:chimps to humans? by suss · · Score: 4, Funny

      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...

  2. transposons by tid242 · · Score: 4, Informative
    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

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    With a few exceptions, secrecy is deeply incompatible with democracy and with science. --Carl Sagan