Slashdot Mirror
Viral Fossil Brought Back To Life
hey hey hey writes "In a controversial study, researchers have resurrected a retrovirus that infected our ancestors millions of years ago and now sits frozen in the human genome. Published online by Genome Research this week, the study may shed new light on the history of these genomic intruders, as well as their role in tumors. Although this particular virus, dubbed Phoenix, is a wimpy one, some argue that resuscitating any ancient virus is inherently risky and that the study should have undergone stricter reviews."
Wasn't this the plot of one of the Final Fantasy games?
Gamertag: WyleType
need I say more
phirst
Next, scientists (out of sheer curiosity) will see what happens when a black hole is created at the very center of Earth. After all, the theory behind gravity itself is that the gravitational pull is infinite at the center of gravity. So, even something as powerful as a black hole coexisting at the center of Earth should only make a minimal impact, right? Right?
A virus that's been sitting in our genome is resurrected. I wonder what else is in there? I know we have a whole host of transposons that like to jump around and usually don't do any harm.
Obviously, greater minds than mine are working on this. But can someone explain why this is dangerous if this retrovirus is already part of our genome?
...a new (retro)virus.
/sarcasm
I mean - I was just saying the other day to a friend, I haven't
seen a new virus in ages... just the same old ebola, HIV,
flu, H5N1, herpes... I mean YAWN. Where's the excitement in
those?
Only 3% of the genome is genes, the rest is junk DNA which has a lot of interesting stuff like alternate versions of genes, commented out ideas, and coded critters like this one that sit in your DNA like "sunken ships". There are like 200 copies of reverse transcriptase in the human genome, different versions, all in this junk DNA. Reverse transcriptase has absolutely no legitimate purpose in a eukaryote. It can take a segment of RNA (usually viral RNA), convert it into DNA, and stich it into your genome. Only viruses need to do that. The RNA itself has code for reverse transcriptase, and we see it in our chromosomes all over the place, this gene that is useful to viruses and no one else. It's the most common gene in your body.
Viruses have a lytic cycle where they express nasty genes and build capsids inside you, and a lysogenic cycle, where they adopt a different strategy- they get into your DNA, become part of the junk DNA, and they replicate during normal cell division along with all the rest of your DNA.
Junk DNA has all sorts of nasty critters in it. One trick your body uses is to carpet especially infectious regions with methyl groups via cytosine methylation. Basically the idea is that the methyl groups jam up the machinery that comes along to express proteins, so if the proteins are viral, you can "comment them out" that way. When a cell divides, both strands of its DNA have methylated cytosines in the same regions. After the DNA replicates you have two methylated daughter strands, each coupled with a brand new complimentary strand. This complimentary strand has no methyl groups on it. So a clever enzyme comes along, DNA methyltransferase. It has a regulatory domain and a catalytic domain. The regulatory domain runs across the DNA feeling it for methyl groups. If it finds them on one strand, the catalytic domain deposits methyl groups on the other strand. That way, the stretch of DNA can be marked as "bad news" in a way that is heritable, despite the fact that no actual DNA sequence is being "inherited". As far as where the initial methylation signal came from, that can probably be put down to natural selection.
Revival or restoration... I think that a fully restored 1967 Hemi Barracuda is a very nice car!
Anyways, I was more expecting that the focus of controversy here would be evidence or other implications indicative of Nature's myriad ways to encourage evolution.
...but if it's in our genome, shouldn't that mean that it's harmless to us?
You can hold salt in your hand and lick it, so surely it should then be safe to do the same with sodium and chlorine since they are just parts of salt?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Why, haven't you seen Star Trek Next Generation episode - The Chase?
The abstract with a link to the full pdf is available online. The pdf is available on campus from many universities. It is interesting that this is already in the news. This is not technically in print form yet, and was just posted to the journal's advance articles web site.
"Asleep at the switch? I wasn't asleep, I was drunk!" -- Homer
If human beings were designed, it seems to be a poor design to include copies of viruses in it. But we mere mortal humble human beings dont have the intellect to fathom the Divine Intentions. All we can say for sure is that, unless you pay the priest 10% of your income and get dunked in a pool you will rot in Hell.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
ReGenesis, that great canadian cable series about a team of maverick scientists doing cutting edge microbio amid global intrigue :)
They had a story arc the 2nd half of last season, iirc - a cell line used typically had a hidden retrovirus that was millions of years old.
Worth checking out when it returns in the spring for it's 3rd season.
http://www.regenesistv.com/
>> this particular virus, dubbed Phoenix, is a wimpy one
Well, as long as it's not dubbed "Grothrox the Strong, Destroyer of Worlds, Bleeder of Humanity"... just play outside and change out of your school clothes.
In this particular case, there were 30 copies of the virus in the genome. They worked backward to create the original virus. The resultant virus was disabled so that, after replicating once in a cell, the daughter viruses could not replicate. So there was no risk.
In the human genome, the researchers point out, are the pieces from other viruses. 8% of the human genome codes for HERV proteins or their regulatory subunits. If these pieces are activated, they can reassemble to create a new, working virus. This happens naturally.
All of these HERVs are viruses that, throughout human evolution, we and our ancestors have more or less come to terms with. At some point, many of them were probably devastating. But those that caught the virus, survived, and reproduced were able to mitigate the effects of the virus. These are viruses we've reached a "détente" with. They no longer rampage through the population. In fact, some of the proteins they produce are vital to our survival. One of these retroviral proteins permits implantation of the placenta. Without it, we'd all have placentas that don't attach to the uterine lining -- like mice, which as a result, aren't very complex when they have to be born.
Yes, HERVs are related to cancer. This occurs naturally. They act in a transposon-like manner, and they can pop into areas where they either damage mechanisms that prevent cancer or control cell replication. If we don't study these viral remains, we won't learn about them, won't learn what we can safely disable further -- and what we don't dare eliminate from our genome because we are dependent upon it.
These researchers were not Dr. Frankensteins, messing with things man was not meant to know. They were careful, they were deliberate, and theya re beginning the investigation into what could be an incredibly crucial topic in molecular biology.
Remember -- these are viruses that we learned to live with, more or less. By studying them, we can learn to mitigate the damage they still present.
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
Do these people not read any books or watch any movies.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Creating black holes for kicks? That's what they are about to do in 2008 using the Large Hadron Collider.
As a side note, tonight I am sleeping on the couch: got busted typoing a Google image search for 'Large Hadron Collider.'
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Wasn't this the plot of one of the Final Fantasy games?
I'm not sure, but I'm sure Mohinder Suresh would be interested in this information.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Maybe it's just me, but with the choice between:
1) Resurrecting an ancient retrovirus, spreading like the plague from a Level 3 lab
2) Resurrecting a dinosaur that escapes.
I'll take one huge pissed off Trex, light him up with a little A-10 fire, and call it a day.
Also the headline: "Trex Eats 2 Dozen French Scientists", just reads better.
What could possibly go wrong?!
I for one welcome our new ancient-viral overlords
He might be interested in doing "The Stand 2"
See this paper for a detailed treatment of how the family tree of the primates can be reconstructed by the retrovirus sequences in our genes.
Pretty much the only available response from the ID crowd is that God created false evidence to test our faith.
I for one welcome our dinasaur spawning overloards
Doctors do Massage in Longview WA now, who knew?
Step 1: Resurrect Ancient Virus
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Oh ****
Indeed, it's a retro retrovirus. So out of fashion, it just had to be brought back. :-)
* Fedor Petrov, Vice Provost for University Affairs
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
Que best selling Michael Crichton thriller. Movie in '08.
From the headline, I thought that Friendster was getting popular again...
Can someone explain to me why that, if they knew enough about it to ensure it could replicate only once, they needed to revive it to learn anything more about it ?
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
I would like to be the first to welcome our new Virii Overlords...
Movies are not a good view of how science works. Sorry to burst your bubble.
It's Black Oil.
Definitely flamebait, funny flamebait, nothing wrong with that though.
...I'm starting to feel like an iPod.
Many inheritable diseases are part of our genome, too.
So are recessive traits that might express themselves in our children.
So are many inactive things that aren't usually expressed. Think of it as legacy code that would never be called by a sane programmer.
I think that viruses, in particular retro-viruses, will rapidly become one of the essential medical toolkits for treating a number of genetic diseases. They also show alot of potential for treating cancer by targeted drug delivery and cell lysis (google "oncolysis"). Ironically viruses like Herpes may end up saving quite a few lives. I'd love to have a job hacking genomes, but given then again given some of the code bugs I've generated in the past, perhaps it's safer for humanity if I don't tinker.
God was my co-pilot, but then we crashed and I was forced to eat him.
"No Risk"
By no means do I suggest that these researchers necessarily acted dangerously or that their research and research like it should be stopped, but I have to say that complex efforts with potentially "devastating" [your term] results should not be reassured against with phrases like "there was no risk". Your explanation of "The resultant virus was disabled so that, after replicating once in a cell, the daughter viruses could not replicate" only inspires a dubious curiosity for how this was done.
Indeed, also hearing the allegation that "the researchers couldn't be absolutely sure about Phoenix's infectivity" and that only biosafety level 3 was used while a level 4 was recommended, a layperson is left to wonder. (What the hell is a biosafety level in the first place, ?)
These researchers are Dr. Frankensteins in their pursuit of knowledge. And let them be! The pursuit of knowledge is unquestionably good! Just let them be careful while doing it, or they may also be Dr. Frankensteins in their poor safeguarding, Unleashing The Ritz on us.
Biodiversity & Nanomachines
In support of the investigation, let me say that I recently wondered, on the tail of some ethics reading regarding ecology, what other utility values nature could provide us beyond simple resources and recreation. Thinking of how proteins are basically nanomachines; and how much of the unused portions of our genome may be disused codes for once-useful, now-retired proteins; and how hard it must be to design a working nanomachine (just look at how hemoglobin contorts so bizarrely with the simple addition of an oxygen molecule); I came to wonder whether there might be a goldmine of blueprints for tested nanomachines in us. In us and every species we destroy.
Yes, please figure out how to mine genomes for molecular machines. In the meantime we'll see about preserving all these genomes.
Ob. Plural Of 'Virus'
Don't say 'virii'. That isn't even just wrong yet. You probably mean 'viri', which is just wrong. It wasn't used in the plural (being a mass noun, not a count noun) and there may not have been a proper plural form of it in Latin. My guess is that it is actually a 4th declension neuter with a plural of 'virus' (long 'u' sound), but what the hell do I know? Well, more than someone saying 'virii', by a long shot. Be safe, inflect it in English rather than classically: viruses.
Knowing the details of the debate makes you a pedant. I mean, how important is it really? But using the certainly wrong classical form makes you ignorant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_of_virus
Read 'Darwin's Radio' and 'Darwin's Children' on how a virus in the human genome gets reactivated and causes havoc. This cannot end well.
Too lazy to create a sig...
With all the comments on junk DNA and non-functioning parts of the genome, its pretty clear than M$ has learned from mother nature and uses a similar development strategy for their code. No wonder Windows is so robust.
This is mearly phase one of The Human Elimination Projects plan to indiscriminately wipe 90% of all humans from the earth. Stay tuned for phase two.
Haha - I suppose the same could be said about the windows code base. We are 97% ignorant to call it junk code. Bill must love us.
didn't they cover this in StarGate...?
then again, I guess it's only a matter of time before the Simpsons do it. No ancients to help them out though
-Learn Clinical Microbiology from http://adoptamicrobe.blogspot.com/
http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/RootkitRevea ler.html has a tool that can help flesh out all those registry and file system API discrepancies for further study.
Of course it's always safe to run AdAware[ http://www.lavasoft.com/ ] and if you have the budget, purchase WebRoot[ http://www.webroot.com/ ] for a fast, centralized cleaning in the enterprize environment.
A virus millions of years old!? So the cave men must have had Windows computers - neat.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
So when does the virus mutate and start to gestate in humans? I hear that date for colonization is coming soon (December 21, 2012), and the secret government needs more clones. Oh whats that, it's just the hanta virus? WTF...?
but what the hell do I know? Well, more than someone saying 'virii', by a long shot
:)
About grammar, probably. But I'm willing to bet you don't know shit about virii
We say virii because our professors said virii. That's just the way it is.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Someone inform Leon Kennedy.
My hand touched her hand. Her hand touched her boob. By the transitive property, I got some boob! Algebra is awesome!
Knowing the details of the argument is part of what Slashdot is about. I posted so that others would know about the debate. I may be biased. I can remember back to the furor after the first recombinant DNA experiments, the Asilomar conference, etc. I also remember how darned difficult we've learned all those horror scenarios actually are.
I say "no risk" because, had this virus wanted to make a comeback, it already would have done so. There's 30 copies of the virus in the human DNA. If it could come back, it would have already done so. In fact, it may have. HERVs are viruses that we learned to get along with.
The use of the term "devastating" was with regard to the past tense. In the past, they were devastating. Those individuals which were not wiped out, reproduced. Notice all the all-black felines (panthers, esp.). That's a mutation that caused a bottleneck in their evolution. Felines with all black pigment tended to survive the viral onslaught whereas regular colored ones didn't. The virus that caused the problem is no endogenous to all cats.
HIV, if natural selection were permitted to run its course, would eventually reach the same state. Some populations in Africa are believed to coexist with the virus with no apparent long-term harm. There are a number of mechanisms that evolve that would keep a retrovirus from "running free." The point is, human ancestors developed one for the Phoenix virus.
The question of infectivity was a question as to whether the virus would work at all, not whether it would be super-infective. Given the techniques used, which were fairly crude (all things considered), getting the thing to work at all was amazing. Whether it would even be capable of infecting human cells would be another question entirely. Was a mutation in the attachment point on the cell the virus used what caused the virus to go dormant? Are there genetic mechanisms that prevent the virus from replicating at all? Is the virus cell-specific, incapable of infecting the particular cells presented? Any number of factors would have prevented success. That it worked is fairly amazing. It also indicates that this virus may not be completely dormant -- in which case, they didn't create anything that isn't seen normally.
Biosafety Level 3 was fine for this one; if anything, it was excessive. There are always people who claim every genetic engineering experiment ought to be Biosafety Level 4 -- or not done at all. I'm thinking Rifkin here, obviously.
These were not Dr. Frankensteins. They did their work. I'm impressed, and I'm frightened by the hordes that wish to stop all research because of mythical scenarios that don't even make sense.
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
The really funny one was the 'redundant' mod, if you think about it. Clever moderator.
This is Slashdot.
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
So what you're saying is that most of me is bloated/useless code that is only useful to virii?
Its like I'm running on a biological version of Windows.
Seems like the moderator of the parent is the first human in a long time to get Jesus. Judging from the exhibited symptoms, I'd say that this virus attacks the sense of humour in the host and introduces a significant handicap in the ability to spot Funny comments on Slashdot. The influence this had on prehistoric man, is still a mistery.
In molec gen studies, I learned that a holy grail bio weapon would not only be one that selected populations with specific traits (earwax type, melanin, hair type, etc)... but one that also worked uncommonly fast by lysing cells by introducing a type of catalyst virus that would liberate mostly-intact viruses taht became trapped in our ancesters germ cells and are now in EVERY cell in a body waiting to escape and rupture the cells.
If it could happen it would be a nuclear bomb type chain reaction.. an enemy would actually melt into a bloody mush slurry in 20 minutes right before your eyes!
it would make the t-cell chain reaction malady look slow and pathetic in comparison
studying these old intruders is step #1 at Ft Meade
I'm mostly frozen retrovirus genome?
(OK, I don't know how to continue from here....)
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Yup, its called Alcohol.
have these people ever watched a sci-fi movie?! They're supposed to be smart or something and thus geeks ;) I mean come on, aren't we supposed to learn from our past even if it never really happened and was just a storyline from a show? Stargate SG-1, hellooooo.
Is it just me or is it not going to upgrade to Vista in here?
Sorry if it was upsetting. I was addressing the general 'you' regarding 'virii', not the specific you, Rob. I mean no offense. I included that part of my post because this article was bound to spawn an outbreak of incorrect usage. I'm aiming to help people to do right in a context where wrong is going to crop up, so I see it as perhaps only half pedantic.
... great consequences.
p le But in this scenario it just means that the investigators should proceed carefully (as they apparently did). But I also believe that "The opportunity cost of imposing a restrictive measure must be balanced against the potential costs of damage due to a new technology, rather than just considering the potential damages alone."
I can understand following convention, especially if it's among otherwised learned people whose roles are specifically to teach. We're better off absorbing their wisdom rather than looking at it all askance. However, popularity does not make right, teachers of biochemistry are not scholars of Latin, and 'virii' is wrong. The correct classical pluralization of virus is debated, including the point of whether there even is a correct pluralization, but there does exist a correct English inflection. Viruses. For all those teachers who use 'virii', how many contest 'viruses'? Even if your teachers were wrong, you can be right, and probably in a way that they wouldn't deny.
I can see how from a certain standpoint one might be comfortable with the assertion that there is no risk. As a layperson, my point of view is not that standpoint. Nor can I trust that researchers necessarily won't make mistakes. And small mistakes when playing with great possible consequences can amount to
From my perspective I have questions like, "What if the mechanisms that may have made us less susceptible to the old virus have deteriorated or gone dormant?" "What kind of natural frequency of spontaneous retrovirus revival can you expect from 30 incomplete copies that took consensus reconstruction to rebuild effectively?" "What kind of procedurally-based mutations could occur in the process of virus reconstruction for segments where there might be poor or conflicting consensus?" "Could identification of instances of the virus be off somehow, identifying functionally disparate viruses as the same one and encouraging joining them together into a form that has never existed?" Please don't answer those questions as a refutation of my having them. (Do answer them to edify, if you're inclined.) They serve to illustrate a layperson's fear.
The ever-discovering march of science necessarily means there is movement on the edge of understanding. This means that we necessarily don't understand all the ramifications of our actions. You, may say "that it worked is fairly amazing," but I read that as "that it amazes is fairly concerning."
All that said, I am for active investigation. And I thank you for sharing details on the matter. Still, let me reiterate that, as a layperson, being told there is no risk is not reassuring. In fact, one might perceive a tone of certainty and see that as hubris, potentially to be followed by recklessness. Here's something that is a bit reassuring: biosafety level 3 appears to be pretty good precaution. And, use of biosafety level 3 shows that the scientists involved acknowledge and respect the danger, however remote it may be.
I believe in the Precautionary Principle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_princi
If you want to reassure people and minimize the villagers-with-torches reaction, I imagine that open and sincere humility combined with evident care is probably your best bet. If you're thinking that people are obdurate and they should just listen to authority, think 'virii'.
There were two facets of Dr. Frankenstein that I brought up. One was his pursuit (and achievement) of knowledge, the other was recklessness and hubris. I meant that these scientists were Frankenstein in the aspect of advancing science. Then I warned that they should not also be Frankenstein in the other aspect.
Today the retrovirus, next a vault of new viruses to choose from, tomorrow the Tyrannosaurus rex. So cool! One day we will have our Juristic Park! Woo hoo! I got dibs on rex, I already picked out a name for him. I am gonna call him /.
Well, right. I said I was a layperson.
I'm sorry I offended you. I wasn't trying to come off as better. When I said use of 'virii' was ignorant, I meant it as a fact rather than an insult. "Lacking information or knowledge."
Your professors were probably not Latin scholars, so they too were ignorant of proper inflection. A person might be inclined to say "when in Rome...", thinking that convention is correctness in this matter, but there is an actual way for scholars to judge 'virii' as a solecism. Imagine if your community of Latin scholars started saying that viruses were in fact animalcules. Whether it were the norm, it wouldn't be correct.
Imagine you could know by asking an expert. Let's say instead that you didn't, that you just continued using 'virii', and that you even passed it on to your students when you started teaching. And they said, "That's just the way it is."
I fully expect now that the universe will pull an ironic twist and have the 4th declension plural of this particular word be 'virii' for some obscure but legitimate reason, with examples found in freshly unearthed texts.
Hey if Apples can have viruses embedding in them, surely humans can too? *boom crash drumroll*
Max have no junk DNA
IIRC a virus is just a bit of RNA inside a protein shell, so it's not exactly 'alive' to begin with.
If you think this topic is interesting, you might really like Greg Bear's novel on the topic: Darwin's Radio.
With phrases like "In the next stage of evolution, humans are history" and "The next Great War will start inside us" on the cover, you know what you're in for.
Sorry. I couldn't finish my word in the title. (;
Viruses don't live.
They don't eat, excrete, convert energy, grow, reproduce or respond to stimuli.
So they can't be brought back to life.
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
Don't think it's that dangerous... The only reason we are alive today is because our immune system was (and is) capable of dealing with the pathogens (including viruses) of the past. We would not be here if we could not handle them :)
The first rule of controversial science projects: NEVER name it after anything from Biblical or Classical mythology.
You're just asking for trouble!
"I'm frightened by the hordes that wish to stop all research because of mythical scenarios that don't even make sense."
I think it's the "what if you're wrong" question that worries people.
Sure, if your calculations are correct then yes, there is no risk, but if not.....
Ha! So there's actually Core Wars going on in human dna!
Cool. That's like having an entire beowulf cluster of redcode interpreters!
I'm sorry I offended you.
I'm not offended. That's why I put the "smilie" in there. I was pointing out, in a vague way, the joy of specialization. While doing that I am reminded of the old joke "A specialist is someone who knows a great deal about very little". I had no idea what a declension plural is until I met you. Actually - thanks for the eduation!
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I for one, welcome our new fossilised viral overlords.
Ever read The Stand ?
Nuff said.
Guns are for wimps... Use a crossbow.. this way you can pin them to their chair when you go postal.
It could just be that it wasn't particularly funny, of course.
The funny thing is that the article was release on Oct 31st ..
"Asleep at the switch? I wasn't asleep, I was drunk!" -- Homer
Horrible writing flaw. I'm still watching it because it's X-Men on TV (but I don't know the plotline!) but that piece of writing seemed really fucking lazy to me and bodes ill for the series.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
After years of hard work with many specialists trying to answer your fascinating question, I have arrived at the following answer:
They wanted to know more than what's enough to ensure it could only replicate once.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Leave the jokes to the professionals.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
> In a controversial study, researchers have resurrected a retrovirus that
> infected our ancestors millions of years ago and now sits frozen in the human genome.
I wonder why God put a virus' corpse in our genes. That's some intelligent design, I guess.
I feel even dirtier than I did when either I learned I was a multicellular colony, or when I learned mitochondria were captured bacteria with their own DNA living symbiotically.
It's like we all have an icky parasitic twin inside us. Come on, Yahweh. This is intelligent design?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
A viral fossil would be a fossil that has the properties of a virus - a tiny organism that can infect living creatures.
Perhaps a better term would be a fossilized virus.
But it shouldn't.
No one worries about people writing kernel code, accusing them of being "Dr. Frankensteins" because they might accidentally create a virus that will escape their machine, infect the Pentagon, and launch all our nuclear missiles.
Biological viruses aren't any more magic than their machine counterparts.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
We created the kernel, it's something that can be entirely understood by humans.
We did not create life, it's something that cannot be entirely understood by humans.
For every question abut kernel issues, someone knows the answer. The same is not true of biological scenarios. In this way, biological viruses are more mysterious, and that mystery opens the margin of error wider than some believe acceptable.
He speaks broken english to him, able to communicate exactly what he wants to ("your secret is safe with me, can I get a ride?") even though up to then it was a major plot point that he COULDN'T speak English and that's why the junkie kept hanging up on him.
That's a major fucking hole, and it bugs me that anyone let it through. It's tougher to write in a translator, sure, but instead of doing that they compromise the entire plotline? Weaksauce.
The only thing that could explain it is the time rift, and that's still deus ex machina. The writing is passable for an X-Men lookalike but I wouldn't say it's solid.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Your statement about "strongest proof" is arbitrary. Macroevolution is NOT science.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
We should really be focusing on dinosaurs.
My Freakin Blog
watch the SciFi channel?!! We're all doomed
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
How appropriate that the guys name is John Coffin!
So when does the disaster happen?
I don't know, the gaffe bugs me. If it had been basic conversational English I would have swallowed it easier (ok his buddy's teaching him the basics), or if he'd had trouble making himself understood. But it reeked of crappy plot device and it shouldn't have made it on the air. Period.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
I, for one, welcome our new endogenous retrovirus overlords...
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
This is a fossil that can make other fossils?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The idea of a guiding hand in evolution as depicted in Darwin's Radio is a common fallacy. There's no "next stage" in evolution... evolution is a side effect of myriads of small forces, each of them random and unplanned. The fractal branches of zoological taxonomy are the only pattern it makes, the path of any branch is random and guided only by the "terrain" it encounters.
As well as other 'axis of evil' places that have interests in that sort of thing.
Amazing all the fuss about nukes, when this could be far more devastating.
Starman97@Gmail.com (bring it on spammers)
I'm mostly frozen retrovirus genome?C
Like my mailbox, full of SPAM!
ACAAGATvI@grAGCCAV1agr@TTGTCC3nl@rge2d@y!CCCGGC
Yesterday's Science Fiction is today's reality.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
how can it be alien, it was taken out of the HUMAN GENOME, it's part of us
The thing that is part of us is only a number of _degraded copies_ of a virus DNA sequence. They also lack the effective 'switches' that would be needed to transcribe and translate this DNA into the stuff of an actual virus.
So our genome is in this respect a bit like a library containing some virtually unreadable gummed-up copies of a very old recipe book, all of them with different misprints and 'copying losses'.
The researchers have compared the copies, and used DNA manipulation techniques to 'clean up' the misprints, to try and get back to the functioning original -- which in itself does not exist in the human genome. They have also 'cooked' the recipe themselves, to create what seems now to be a viable virus that nobody has ever seen before.
While this is all scientifically very interesting, there are clearly potential dangers: Like many viruses, the components of this newly resurrected virus are likely to embody a number of tricks to outwit the human immune system. The virus is also likely to be capable of adaptive mutations and evolution into new strains if it gets loose.
It might possibly all be harmless even if it escapes.
But then again it might not.
'Pandora's box' comes to mind.
-wb-
'Pandora's box' comes to mind.
Pandoras box? How about Andromeda Strain?
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
Gad, I believe evolution is the best explanation we have, substantially proved, but when you guys say anyone trained who has a belief that runs counter to current training is disreputable, it just makes me want to say 'fuck you'. Damned bully debating.
Just stick to the facts and leave out the invective. The case is not that hard to make.
Slashdot get yourself better please. I am late in reading this thread. I want to read about the virus. There are too many divergent discussions going on. This is too common and not a good way to read about a subject. The only time its good to read about a topic is before 50 comments are added.
A suggestion for the future is to mark funny and off topic perhaps like the following.
1. Lighter display fonts. Remember MIT's Fishwrap from a few years ago?
2. Linear display where real comments and funny and offtopic are linear needs to split the odd topics off to the side somehow. Time to be creative. Perhaps have view levels for funny and off topic.
3. I don't like the way where clicking the little box brings that to the front and top but does not seem to have an undo function.
Is this topic actually being edited? I wonder.
1. Final Fantasy games? Off topic.
2. Andromeda is off topic not insightful.
3. Black holes interesting and appropriate but a crummy title "Wonderful" How about editing the title?
4. Then when I try to click on the little boxes my thread collapses in an opaque manner.
Now please accept my apologies. No doubt I have made many of you furious and I am no longer on your Christmas list. Sorry. Perhaps its my poor intellectual vision. I can only speak from where I stand way out here in distant user land.
Now will anyone actually read this? I suspect not. Just a tree falling in the woods I guess.
Scientist Gamers Resurrecting Killer Viruses eh? Ancient virus fossils -in stasis and harming no one- brought back to life by scientists > http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/0 1/2337203 . Yep, that's what scientists do. Well, for as many of my web pages as I have referenced, I was in hopes I would not have to list this one > http://www.newpath4.com/halloweencandyfromworldsci entistscomeswith2006embeddedrazors.htm . Now that it is becoming a daily/weekly occurrence to read about SCIENTISTS THREATENING HUMAN LIFE ON PLANET EARTH I don't see where I have a choice but to counter via SlashDot.
r enewablegreenenergysources.htm to try and strike a little balance to TV commercials about our "need" for more of the Oil and Natural Gas Industry energy products. Imitation Energy is a whole lot more "natural" {all Nature} than natural gas. However, they do write some nice webpages > http://www.wtrg.com/data/ .
Scientists are out of control, un-regulated, accepting no supervision but their own, a freedom worthy of Hitler. And since I'm here I may as well add that I added information to my page about "imitation energy" vs "real energy" > http://www.newpath4.com/imitationenergy.htm . While I was in a good mood I wrote a short 10k page titled " Pay Your Energy Bills Wisely vs Imitation Energy > http://www.newpath4.com/friendlyplanetalternative
Industrial Age 2 + How-to Stop Malignant Cancers.
OK, Ok, ok, I'd have thought that the maybe his belly-button would fall off! would have tipped everyone off that I was joking, by responding to what he said rather than what he obviously meant, but not everyone seems to have gotten it; so I'll be serious for a moment. to create what seems now to be a viable virus that nobody has ever seen before. sorry but that's what they are, viruses in the wild pick-up bits and pieces of DNA^RNA and that makes them different and sometimes unique; at some point in time every virus was never seen before. I'm not saying they can be frivolous about safety but these guys were using level 3 bio-security (where the lower level 2 is actually required by excepted protocols) and testing with cultured cells; it's not like they made the virus then squirted them up the noses and went home to kiss the wife and hug the kids or anything like that.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Maybe it would implant in the genomes of other primates and move their evolutionary direction closer to ours. Well, maybe it would in a Sci Fi Original Movie.
And we're back round to wondering if The Great Worm were in fact unleashed because of error.
The virus that caused the 1917 influenza epidemic was recently unearthed (matter of finding some human remains that still had virus).
The reasons were positive (analyze virus, try to figure out how it re-assembled itself in that deadly-to-humans way, see how close to totally screwed we all are with the current avian flu). AFAIK the virus itself was destroyed after it was sequenced.
But still - I'd have thought long and hard before doing something like that - and would likely have decided that it wasn't worth the risk.
BTW, we are essentially one "switch" away from being very screwed - and the influenza virus is really bad at re-assembling itself, which means that evolution works very fast with it. The major risk is industrially raised chicken - notably "broiler sheds" where thousands of chickens live in very little space, and in their own shit. Normally an extra virulent strain of a disease will die out because if you kill the host very quickly, there's little time for the infection to spread (so a selection pressure for less virulence) - but this doesn't count in situations where the healthy can't get away from the sick.
Have a look at http://birdflubook.com/ for the semi-technical story.