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Corn Genome Sequenced
dooling writes "Later this week, the completion of the maize genome draft sequence will be announced. Maize has a large genome (slightly smaller than human) that is highly repetitive (about 80%). These facts made a whole-genome shotgun approach to sequencing infeasible. Therefore, a BAC-by-BAC approach was taken, similar to what was done for the Human Genome Project. Further work on the maize genome will focus on the parts of the genome that have genes, thereby avoiding the highly-repetitive regions of the genome (even though the maize genome is slightly smaller than human, it is thought to have about twice as many genes). You can read my take here."
Sure, but retroviruses don't (on average) kill us before we can reproduce
Say what? That's a strange statement. First of all, it's true about all modern viruses and bacterial infections by definition, because we're a successful species, and any successful high-level species at this stage of the game has to be well-defended against bacteria and viral invaders. By analogy, you couldn't possibly introduce Windows 3.1 in today's environment without it being slaughtered immediately.
But what we're talking about is what things were like way back in the day, when complex animals first evolved, and the whole retroviral infection mechanism was just being tried out. At the beginning of the arms race, so to speak, before each side had armored up. In those days it's very likely retroviruses did kill many and many an individual before he could reproduce, until both sides evolved away from that mutually-assured-destruction scenario.