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

Bible Code?

[Gotung]

Isn't this "discovery" sort of like the Bible Code? So they searched the human genome and found a bunch of "virus like" patterns. Any sufficiently large set of information is going to give you some matches on just about anything you search for.

Re:Bible Code?

[FlyingBishop]

If you found a scroll in a cave that contained the book of John, would you say that it came from a different source than the book of John in the Bible? That's entirely different from rearranging letters until it says what you want it to say.

Re:Bible Code?

[2short]

"Any sufficiently large set of information is going to give you some matches on just about anything you search for."

Yes, but not a sufficiently large rate of matches. If the researchers are competent, they can calculate what percent of the data would be expected to match their search even if the data is just random, and decide if the match rate exceeds that by a significant margin. The 'researchers' of the Bible Code were clearly not competent in exactly this way.

As opposed to the paperback book market, Nature does not tend to print whatever comes across it's desk.

Re:But I use antivirus!!!!

[Krneki]

It does, but as a side effect you are unresponsive 80% of your time.

Re:Summary and article misleading

[IronDragon]

Much like someone who copies the content of their old computer straight over to a new computer every few years. Repeat this process a few billion times, and you'll be quite surprised at the amount of sheer useless crap that just keeps getting copied. Voila! DNA.

Re:Not Bad

[je ne sais quoi]

Unless of course it's the 8% that makes you bald as you get older, or makes you susceptible to heart disease or diabetes, or any number of inherited undesirables. Remember, things like sickle cell anemia originated as a defense against malaria. In fact, in TFA it actually suggests an hypothesis:

"These data yield a testable hypothesis for the alleged, but still controversial, causative association of BDV infection with schizophrenia and mood disorders," Feschotte said.

where BDV here is the virus whose DNA they were searching for in the human genome. There you go, if you're depressed, manic or schizophrenic, it could be one of your ancestors got a brain virus.

Re:Useful?

[tomhudson]

The weird thing is that research is now showing that a lot of the so-called "junk dna" is actually used indirectly. Maybe we like junk food so much because we eat what we are? :-)

But this whole thing isn't all that surprising when you consider where our mitochondria came from.

Re:Useful?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The viral DNA that isn't conducive to death probably stayed in." -- There, fixed that for you.

Re:Useful?

[vadim_t]

How would they know?

Hero of Alexandria didn't have trains in mind when he made his Aeolipile. It was used as a fancy way to open temple doors. Only much later people figured out a practical use for it.

Boolean algebra was a very obscure branch nobody cared about until it suddenly became very useful.

Lasers, IIRC didn't have an immediate application when they were invented. They definitely didn't have DVD drives in mind.

Re:What a crappy press release

[mcgrew]

No, 8% of your DNA comes from viruses that infected your anscestors' reproductive organs and were passed on to you. TFA is actually an interesting read.

Re:Useful?

[corbettw]

I am a pretty smart guy who doesn't understand the utility of pure research.

One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn't belong!

Re:Ob. Matrix quote

[AmberBlackCat]

Ahhh religion, where changing flesh into bread and blood into wine isnt considered "witchcraft". Yet all other "magics" was at one time punishable. Hypocrisy, it loves religion.

And Slashdot, where every story about biology turns into an attack on Christianity or some other faith. Things were different in the Pit & the Pendulum days, but lately it seems like you attack them way more than they attack you.

Re:Useful?

[Chris Burke]

In fact, back when lasers were first invented, people referred to them as "a solution looking for a problem". They were so cool, but for a while nobody could think of anything useful to do with them.

Silly folks.

"Insufficient awesome" is the problem, and lasers are the answer.