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One Species' Genome Discovered Inside Another's
slyyy writes "The Universtiy of Rochester has discovered the complete genome of a bacterial parasite inside the genome of the host species. This opens the possibility of exchanging DNA between unrelated species and changing our understanding of the evolutionary process. From the article: 'Before this study, geneticists knew of examples where genes from a parasite had crossed into the host, but such an event was considered a rare anomaly except in very simple organisms. Bacterial DNA is very conspicuous in its structure, so if scientists sequencing a nematode genome, for example, come across bacterial DNA, they would likely discard it, reasonably assuming that it was merely contamination--perhaps a bit of bacteria in the gut of the animal, or on its skin. But those genes may not be contamination. They may very well be in the host's own genome. This is exactly what happened with the original sequencing of the genome of the anannassae fruitfly--the huge Wolbachia insert was discarded from the final assembly, despite the fact that it is part of the fly's genome.'"
There are multiple retroviral genomes in our own genome. So I am not too surprised.
http://genomebiology.com/2001/2/6/reviews/1017
Does that mean the bacteria that helps us digest could have lifted some human dna?
This might have an interesting impact on the 10 year forecast to creating artificial life discussion from earlier today.
Walk with Music;
as long as i don't get the genes from my neighbour
First thing that pops in my mind reading this are the Wraith from Stargate Atlantis. (parasites infesting humans and evolving in a human eating monster)
I didn't found something funny to put here.
What's with the scifi tag? This is real stuff, not fiction. And not entirely surprising sicne mitochondria in humans are (hypothesized?) ancient bacteria that have been incorporated into the human genome
Hmm, weren't mitochondria, that occur in all our cells, originally symbiotic bacteria?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
This discovery is unsetling and I hope that it's an error. There's already evidence that pesticide resistance from GM crops has turned up in weeds. Gene swapping in the wild might happen more often than we would like. Some of the unpleasant possibilities include food you can't eat, cotton you can't wear and weeds you can't get rid of.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I thought I was into some kinky shit, but I never tried to stick my genome into someone.
-Peter
Looks like they found the descolada!
Now to infect some piggies with this bacteria a la enders game series
I vaguely remember reading about the human genome being found to contain the genome of viruses that we our bodies had defeated aeons ago, but which had been incorporated into our own genetic code as a result. I can't find the text now, but I'm guessing I read it on Slashdot. It is an intriguing idea - imagine in millenia to come, some gigantic alien species carrying around the human genetic code inside their own bodies :)
Of course I'm being high, here, and talking out of my ass, but it does lend a whole new perspective on our role as a part of the ecosystem, as opposed to separate from it.
expandfairuse.org
Not so surprising if you've read Dawkins (For the non geneticists among us).
You see, according to him, we are machines whose purpose is to allow genes to replicate. The fact that other genes co-opt this mechanism isn't entirely surprising if you look at it from that perspective.
Deleted
But of course we understand genetics and the dynamics of genome development well enough that it's perfectly reasonable for us to manipulate the genes of our primary food crops and release them into the wild. No problem there.
"Research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." -- Wernher von Braun
Oh, come on, you all knew the Furon genome was secreted into the human genome, right? That's why Crypto 137 is wandering around collecting brain stems!
Rodney is that you?
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed H
I haven't heard of a whole genome being inside another species. Although, the mitochondria (which are small energy producing factories inside most life - including mammals) have their own DNA which is separate from our nuclear DNA. Its DNA sequence resembles the sequence of single-celled organisms, which hints that there was a fusion of two different organisms hundreds of millions of years ago. Additionally, plants have chloroplasts (which do photosynthesis), and these are similar - they appear to have been cyanobacteria (independent organisms) that fused with another organism and became organelles within those cells. There are also bits of viral DNA in our own genome - it apparently fused into our DNA long ago. (In fact, you can trace evolutionary relationships by comparing the sequence and positions of these viral bits of DNA across species. Unsurprisingly, humans and apes share a remarkable number of matching viral DNA chunks.)
roughly 8% of our own species' genome consists of bacterial and viral genetic material. some of the segments are nearly complete with at least one case of a virus being resurected called Phoenix. it seems to be a fairly common process, viruses can lose critical genes while trying to replicate in cells which can leave them unable to reproduce as usual, the genome becomes integrated into our own. there are also cases [herpes for example] which can integrate their genome with ours in certyain cells and effectively become dormant, they start the cycle again when and if certain conditions are met. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/07/science/07virus. html?ei=5088&en=492dd1d370217836&ex=1320555600&adx nnl=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1163032655-5n RqAOkgWGeKvh/qQcSYCg
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I was just going to post something along this line. I believe the process is termed endosymbiotic theory.
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welcome our genome rewriting bacteria overlords!
I wonder if this has already happened to humans through generations. In fact, I wonder if this is a standard working component of evolution, where bacteria are a catalyst. It seems that nature always gives us nice surprises to keep us in awe and realizing we don't know anything about biology.
(As a side note, I was suddenly reminded of the Metroid Fusion game, where Samus absorbs the X cores' DNA and incorporates them into her system)
It dosen't stop there. Certain parasites are apparently able to change the behavior of their hosts.
Clearly a copy/paste error...
What I first though about when I read this story was.. We should clean the host's genome and then defrag it! We need some ad-aware like tool to clean the genome! :-)
I guess this is a new form of car analogies.
Now what would be really good would be to know if this dna can become a parasite again in any way...
And if so.. what triggers it?!! :P
"This opens our eyes to the possibility of exchanging DNA between unrelated species and changing our understanding of the evolutionary process."
There, fixed that for you. Us finding out about something doesn't mean it didn't exist before we knew, as much as we like to believe.
it just means the FSM reused his code. Doesn't everyone?
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
I think it would be interesting to take a person's stem cell and try to remove all the "junk DNA" from the nucleus, then grow the cell thru a few generations (perhaps even to a full clone) and see how different it is from the original person. Very likely a lot of what we think is junk DNA isn't useless after all. Probably the reason we have 46 chromosomes in the first place is that we've been accumulating genetic material from other microbes over the span of millions of years...
-- *My* journal is more interesting than *yours*...
...how long until we have fruitfly genome in human DNA?
Answer that, André Delambre/Seth Brundle!
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Otherwise, just post a correction to what you said.
...was unavailable for comment.
Can someone explain how the parent is a troll? Off topic maybe, funny at a long stretch (use drugs, that sometimes works. Redundant or recursive... I don't understand!
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
Perhaps those birds were hatching from the trees after all.
found in sheep?
Say hello to my little sig.
Why do we put so much stock in people so often surprised?
We don't know it all. We don't control it all; it's an illusion.
What's THE most exercized part of your body- your mouth and toungue? It's been going before you 'knew' you were alive. You use it tens-of-thousands of times a day- everyone (not in a coma) does. But STILL there are 80yo's that bite their lip.
Science follows the Bible, not the other way around. The Bible brings up key points about how to live a happier (not thrilling, not rampaging, not miserable) life, but doesn't say why. Later, science comes along and shows why. Ask yourself; how did the Jews have germ-avoiding techniques during the plagues? Why were they not so ticked-off to be put in ghettos in those ages? [Because there, in the places no one wanted to go, they could keep things clean- no peeing in the streets, which the French still do.]
Long, long ago the Bible talks of the Earth being suspended from nothing, and the north pole pointing to the center of the universe (in so many words). It's the only ancient book that gets it right. SURE, the Roman Catholic church imprisoned geniuses for crossing what the Pope thought, but that's not a religion-thing- that's a people-thing. Just like when Christians blow up abortion clinics. They know it's wrong to kill this way...but they should also know it's not the Christian's job to make such decisions. [The parable of the tares].
So sure, being able to float a frog with magnetisim is cool; very cool, in fact, but understand our place...we're occupants of a very rich and complex environment in which we live. Go with humility and non-judgement into science; soak it all in. To ignore the Bible when searching the heavens is kinda like splitting atoms while ignoring Einstein.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
Weeds have already been given pesticide resistance through regular polenation and natural selection. This is bad enough because it defeats the purpose and there are plenty of studies that GM crops are harmful to wildlife, including mysteriously disappearing honey bees.
Newer concerns are better written and documented here by a Monsanto whistle blower. We already know that the industry was sloppy because unapproved GM crops have contaminated the US rice supply. It may be that the people who worried about GM crops were right and evidence of genes crossing species is just one of the many things they feared. Genetic sequencing is new and bound to bring big surprises.
It's good practice to keep an open mind but be careful until you know things are safe. A couple of historical examples show how caution works and what industry does when it's not careful. People who hear about the use of lead and arsenic in paint and wallpaper often wonder how people could be so stupid as to have that kind of thing in their homes. The answer is that printers and painters overstepped their knowledge and embraced new toys that made them money. At the opposite end of the of caution is Rontgen, the discover of Xrays. He was very careful to shield all of his sources with lead bricks because he did not know what his newly created rays would do to him. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he did not die of cancer. People continued to expose themselves needlessly for half a century before sane practices were finally codified.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
...include the complete genome for pizza.
Cloned foods give the statement "We had that last week!" a whole new meaning.
It gets even better when you consider the implications of this in the light of Creationists' "Genesis Kinds" argument. If hybridization is so absolute between radically different species, with bacteria acknowledgedly and fundamentally evolving in 'real time' -- then you put two and two together and you get: "So sorry, you're just plain stupid, Mr. Creation Scientist." I would normally call comments like this 'flamebait' -- but this time I just had to get it out there. lol
This may mean that the idea of the "inheritance tree" needs to be revisited. One speculation for the Cambrian Explosion is that a genetic system evolved that made inter-species gene swapping easier (assisted by microbes and viruses). This could speed up evolution by swapping "good ideas". Species A could steal the eye design of species B, and species B could steal the immune system of species A, etc. But it may make paleontology and fossil evolution interpretation tricky. (As species grew more complicated over time, swapping became more difficult.) Instead of an evo tree in the textbooks, we may start seeing Directed Acyclic Graphs.
Table-ized A.I.
Jeff Goldbug stars in a remake of the classic horror film. A brilliant insect scientist accidentally merges his DNA with a Bacterium whilst experimenting with teleportation and undergoes a frightening transformation.
... feel strangely compelled to think about my new Inner Lords.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
1. Find an 'embedded' genome
2. Patent the original (and unimportant) organism's genome
3. Sue the sellers of the commercial crop with that embedded genome
4. You know this bit...
Nobody cares if you patent the genome of some boring bacterium, but if that turns out to be a constituent of, say, rice or racehorses, then you have a goldmine!
> Hard to imagine that viral DNA is 5% of our genome without having any impact Maybe it's a good thing. Maybe it's why we are immune to those. Or it helps us develop immunity to new viruses, which surely are based on these ancestors. The deeper we delve, the more wonderous it is.
"Hey, you got fruitfly in my wolbachia"
"You got wolbachia in my fruitfly!"
Actually, it's very easy to imagine. Transcribing DNA to proteins happens between a START and a STOP marker. If those markers are lost -- heck, even if just the START marker is lost -- then that piece of code is never "executed". In programming terms, it's commented out.
And, yeah, your genetic code contains a whole bunch of commented-out sequences. Dunno, I don't have much trouble believing that they have no impact whatsoever
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I remember having read this in "the selfish gene" by Richard Dawkings that was written 30 years ago... whats so great about this? or is it just a prove that it actually works that way?
You point to conspiracy type sites that have little evidence and just lots of theory, and yet you are a neo-con loving moron. You are just plain WEIRD.
Horizontal gene transfer is already known:s fer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_gene_tran
That's why I'm not so worried about genetic engineering.
Is this the equivalent of computer virtualization on humans?
Now if only the host genome ran XEN..
gtkaml.org
On a related note, mitochondria and chloroplasts are thought to have been introduced when one cell devoured another, and the two cells formed a symbiotic relationship. Over time, their ability to replicate together became fine-tuned, and the inner cell lost abilities that were no longer necessary. This process is termed serial endosymbiosis.
Wolbachia bacteria DNA in Fruitfly Erm.. it does this.. this is what it does. Could also be related to junk DNA issues. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolbachia EuroBorg "You can be assimilated if you want to."
I like that other labs just throw out this as contamination. This guy looks into it and has a break thru.
That's good science. Like Enstien explaining why those pesky Newtonian equations don't always work.
That DNA is in there because God put it there . It's supposed to be there. It's just coincidental that it resembles bacterial DNA.
See? It's science!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
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With the new report that some organisms' genomes exist within others, maybe Wired's article is missing the point - that non-bacterial genomes often encode bacterial proteomes (collections of proteins). Maybe, then, bacterial proteomes decode non-bacterial genomes. That would make them factories for non-bacterial genetic expression.
All that blurs the lines of classification if they ever really existed. Maybe a different classification scheme is in order (pun intended) - one that categorizes primarily according to (inter)action, not morphology.
http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/news/2004/10/6 5252/