8% of Your DNA Comes From a Virus

An anonymous reader writes "About 8 percent of human genetic material comes from a virus and not from our ancestors, according to an article by University of Texas at Arlington biology professor Cédric Feschotte, published in the Jan. 7, 2010 issue of Nature magazine."

Comments

Summary and article misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

These are endogenous virus fragments. Which means that a virus inserted itself into your ancestor's DNA. So you didn't get this new DNA after you were born, you inherited the 8% viral DNA from your ancestors.

the OA refed in the OP link is in N&V section

[mapkinase]

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7277/full/463039a.html

That section is mostly commissioned and if not submissions reviewed by editor (technically, not peer reviewed).

The author of the referred N&V article is the author one of the articles in the reference section...

For peer-reviewed article, I would go for:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7277/full/nature08695.html

written by bunch of Japanese:

Endogenous non-retroviral RNA virus elements in mammalian genomes

Retroviruses are the only group of viruses known to have left a fossil record, in the form of endogenous proviruses, and approximately 8% of the human genome is made up of these elements1, 2. Although many other viruses, including non-retroviral RNA viruses, are known to generate DNA forms of their own genomes during replication3, 4, 5, none has been found as DNA in the germline of animals. Bornaviruses, a genus of non-segmented, negative-sense RNA virus, are unique among RNA viruses in that they establish persistent infection in the cell nucleus6, 7, 8. Here we show that elements homologous to the nucleoprotein (N) gene of bornavirus exist in the genomes of several mammalian species, including humans, non-human primates, rodents and elephants. These sequences have been designated endogenous Borna-like N (EBLN) elements. Some of the primate EBLNs contain an intact open reading frame (ORF) and are expressed as mRNA. Phylogenetic analyses showed that EBLNs seem to have been generated by different insertional events in each specific animal family. Furthermore, the EBLN of a ground squirrel was formed by a recent integration event, whereas those in primates must have been formed more than 40 million years ago. We also show that the N mRNA of a current mammalian bornavirus, Borna disease virus (BDV), can form EBLN-like elements in the genomes of persistently infected cultured cells. Our results provide the first evidence for endogenization of non-retroviral virus-derived elements in mammalian genomes and give novel insights not only into generation of endogenous elements, but also into a role of bornavirus as a source of genetic novelty in its host.

Re:Bible Code?

[cmiller173]

Actually Down Syndrome (technically Trisomy 21) is having a whole extra copy of chromosome 21 not the lack of one.

Misleading title

[BurningRome]

The "8% of your genome" comes from the first paragraph of the News and Views article which reviews the actual article by Horie et al, and is referring to ALL viral remnants in the human genome, not just this new Bornavirus one. From a quick scan of the paper, it looks like they didn't estimate what fraction of the human genome comes from their Bornavirus, but they only describe 4 actual elements - so that's a vanishingly small part of the human genome. The vast majority of viral elements in the genome come from retroviruses and other retrotransposons, and that's been known for a long time.

Re:Not Bad

[digitalunity]

Unless it occurred recently and you're an intermediary state between mutation occurring and the mutation dying out.

Our modern civilization though protects the well being of even those with negative traits who would have otherwise naturally died out. That's not to say evolution in humans has stopped. Instead, we're simply not weeding out the negative traits.

Re:Ob. Matrix quote

[flitty]

Wat? Transubstantiation is official church Doctrine for over 1/6th of the earth's population, and has been since The Council of Trent in 1551. I know it's simplistic to say that 1 billion people in the church all believe this teaching exactly, but come on, we're not talking about some strange, obscure cult here...

Re:Useful?

[Bengie]

I remember reading an article about sheep and virii. Some type of sheep use to have a virus that use to be bad for it. Even though this virus was bad, it did have one good attribute. It reduced the chance of a miscarriage and did it better than another "native" gene.

It so happened that this viral infection reduced the chances of miscarriages enough that at some point the virus stopped being bad for the sheep and they had a better chance to reproduce.

Now days, if you neutralize the virus, the sheep will always miscarry since the old gene got silenced/removed in favor for the virus.

The sheep and virus evolved to live together.

I read this a LONG time ago, i think it was in Discovery mag or something, but I can't remember much more than the idea of the story. The details might be slightly off, but the summary is the same. And they did talk as if the virus was still actually living in the host, not just select genes.