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

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That section is mostly commissioned and if not submissions reviewed by editor (technically, not peer reviewed).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

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...