Slashdot Mirror
New HIV Strain Discovered
reporter and barnyjr were among the readers alerting us to the discovery of a new strain of the HIV virus, found in a woman from the west central African nation of Cameroon. "It differs from the three known strains of human immunodeficiency virus and appears to be closely related to a form of simian virus recently discovered in wild gorillas, researchers report in Monday's edition of the journal Nature Medicine. ... The most likely explanation for the new find is gorilla-to-human transmission, Plantier's team said. But... they cannot rule out the possibility that the new strain started in chimpanzees and moved into gorillas and then humans, or moved directly from chimpanzees to both gorillas and humans. ... Researchers said it could be circulating unnoticed in Cameroon or elsewhere. The virus's rapid replication indicates that it is adapted to human cells, the researchers reported."
Somebody once told me, and by somebody I mean someone that should actually be knowledgeable about the subject (Zoology expert), that apparently our DNA is close enough to some primates that it IS possible to have offspring with them, similar to how Lions and Tigers can have offspring (of course most animal hybrids are usually sterile), but nobody's ever tried it for a plethora of reasons (mostly moral ones).
Now this leads me to 2 points:
1) If anyone has any facts or data relating to this little tidbit of information that either proves or disproves it, please post a link or two! I'm very intrigued to know if he is actually right.
2) If this is IS true, then we can probably put this whole idea of someone fucking a Monkey and catching AIDS to rest, since by and large there would HAVE to have been a monkey/human hybrid born at some point, which I don't think has ever happened (despite supposedly being possible).
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
I'd have to go back into journals to find exact articles, but here is what I remember from my Primatology courses:
(1) Human/Chimp hybrid experiments have been done, by a Soviet researcher in the early 20th Century. No offspring were ever produced.
(2) Recent research (2000+) suggests that we did breed with chimps regularly in the period following the initial divergence. As time goes on and we continue to diverge, it becomes less feasible.
Not very specific, but it wasn't a topic we covered in any real depth.