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

Not Bad

[pilsner.urquell]

Eight percent, I consider that a fair return on an investment.

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:Not Bad

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

No, those are the symptoms of our genetic origins as Pak Protectors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pak_Protector

Re:Not Bad

[maxume]

Sickle cell anemia originated as a mutation. The mutation happens to confer some defense against malaria, so it became widespread in certain geographic areas and is still present in the population.

That's a small difference in phrasing, but it is much clearer.

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:Not Bad

[FiloEleven]

If my ancestor got a brain virus, and it is still with us, then it most probably is that that virus provided something very positive compared to the negatives that you speak of.

No. All it means is that whatever changes the virus makes, it doesn't greatly affect the ability (means and opportunity) of those who have it to reproduce. Remember, natural selection, the mechanism through which evolution operates, is not working toward a glorious future of perfection, it is a consequence of how adapted an organism is to its environment. If the organism can reproduce just as much with the virus as without, then it's going to stick around even if all it does is sometimes cause schizophrenia and provides no positive traits.

Re:Ob. Matrix quote

[dsavi]

Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure. Okay that's done with.

Useful?

[Kolie]

Is any of that DNA in use or are those parts dormant? What effect do these modifications have on us beyond the initial use of replication and further propagation of viruses?

Re:Useful?

[Wonko the Sane]

Back with this story first came out I remember reading that DNA introduced by virus is thought to have given us the genes that allow the formation of placenta, which gave rise to mammals.

All the articles from around that time seem to be locked away behind paywalls now.

Re:Useful?

[oh_my_080980980]

RTA

The researcher was looking at the Bornavirus (BDV) and its association with Schizophrenia. So yes, it's active and yes it has an effect on us.

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:Useful?

[icegreentea]

Apparently a lot of the ERVs (that 8% of our DNA made from retrovirus pieces) get expressed during pregnancy by the fetus. One of the results is that the mother's immune system gets depressed (apparently a lot of HIV-like stuff going on there) that prevents the mother's immune system from killing the fetus. There's probably lots of other fun stuff going on that we don't know about yet. It's actually really cool when you think about it... mammalian childbirth being possible because some immunodepressent virus infected some reptile a long long time ago.

Re:Useful?

[IICV]

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.

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:Useful?

[timeOday]

The viral DNA that isn't conducive to life would have evolved out

Evolution is a very noisy process. It does not assure that we are all maximally fit, only fit enough that all our ancestors managed to reproduce. The boundary of viability is people who are viable, but whose children are not.

Viral DNA might be introduced to our genome as a side-effect of viral infection at a faster rate than natural selection can remove it out of our genome, even if it is harmful to us.

And any benefit from schitzophrenia would have to be so significant as to outweigh the cost of losing touch with reality, which is enormous. Perhaps our DNA code for a randomized process that usually results in a healthy amount of creativity, but sometimes too much. That gene could be preserved even if it is deleterious in outliers. In fact the variability of gene expression ensures that genes advantageous in their mean effect are sometimes less advantageous, i.e. relatively harmful.

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.

Re:Useful?

[UnknowingFool]

Well the term "dormant" doesn't mean what it used to mean since the human genome has been mapped. Before the mapping, it was thought that genes or "active" part of our DNA controlled every aspect of processes and the expectation was that humans would have at least 100,000 genes. There is "dormant" DNA in all organisms and it would represent a small part of our genome. That turned out not to be the case. Humans have about 23,000 genes which is fewer than found in corn and many of our genes are common with other plants and animals. The difference it turns out is that while we have the same genes as other organisms, there are different parts of the "dormant" DNA. This dormant DNA while it does not contain any genes contains triggers and modifiers to genes. For example animals all have the same gene to make limbs but the triggers are different in a whale as opposed to a bird as opposed to a human.

Re:Useful?

[linguizic]

You must mean gave rise to placental mammals. Not all mammals have placentas (see marsupials and monotremes [which are way cool btw]).

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.

Re:Useful?

[nine-times]

"The viral DNA that isn't conducive to death before reproductive age probably stayed in." -- fixed further?

Re:Useful?

[Opportunist]

Can someone hand this guy an insightful mod? Because it's one of the things we tend to overlook far too easily.

Evolution is not about "survival". It's about passing your genes on. You win the evolution game by having offspring. Whether you survive for long afterwards is only interesting as long as it enhances your offspring's ability to survive and again pass the genes on.

For reference, see a few species that die during intercourse (male only, of course) or shortly after giving birth/laying eggs/whatever else way the genes get passed.

Evolution is not about making sure you get old. Quite the opposite, actually. We humans are very social beings and our social bond to our parents would make sure that we carry that (from an evolutionary point of view) "dead weight" around. Basically, in a purely evolutionary sense, it would make the most sense if we died as soon as our offspring is old enough to care about themselves.

Like my PC

[Krneki]

8% of my Windows code comes from Viruses.

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?

[SharpFang]

Not necessarily.
A virus infects a human. It gets to infect the sperm or egg cell. Insignificant part of genetic code gets replaced.
A child is born with -all- its cells containing the virus-originated code.

Of course the replaced part will be several genes at most, but if the mutation is insignificant or positive, it will remain in all the offspring. Meanwhile this may repeat any number of times and will be perpetuated through ages.

If a defect of lacking one whole chromosome is non-lethal (Down's syndrome), a minor damage to your genome has a really good chance of not affecting your offspring at all.

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:Bible Code?

[Jhon]

If I found a really big scroll in a cave that contained billions and billions of apparently random letters -- but somewhere in the middle of all that was the text of the book of John (or "The Three Little Pigs" or whatever), I MIGHT suspect it came from a different source, yes.

Infinite monkeys pounding on keyboards over an infinite span of time would create the combined works of William Shakespeare, and all that...

Certainly not saying that's what happened here -- but the GPs question/point isn't entirely without merit.

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:Bible Code?

[mapkinase]

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

That's why the bioinformatics tool the Japanese (authors of the original paper in Nature) were using (called BLAST) has a parameter called an e-value for each sequence similarity hit. It's basically a probability to encounter such hit randomly in a database of that size (assuming the sequences in the database are pseudo-randomly distributed).

That evalue for the found matches is less than 1e-70.

Re:Bible Code?

[reverseengineer]

Just a minor quibble- Down syndrome is caused by having an extra copy of chromosome 21 (trisomy), not a missing copy (monosomy). In humans, monosomy is fatal for the non-sex determining chromosomes (Turner syndrome is the result of monosomy X), and the only somatic trisomy conditions that are remotely survivable much past birth are those of 13, 19, and 21, and each of those has a set of profound symptoms such that they have an associated syndrome (Patau, Edwards, Down). This does nicely illustrate that issues with genetic insertion, deletion, and translocation are not so much a question of quantity as with placement. Trisomy of chromosome 21 is survivable because there aren't enough vital genes affected to cause inviability (the somatic chromosomes are numbered by size, with 1 the largest).

Your genome can tolerate a significant insertion of genes, as long as they don't cause serious trouble. In terms of viral DNA additions, the most significant risk is for a stretch of viral DNA to insert within an existing gene, breaking it and possibly creating a new gene variant that causes harm. This is believed to be a mechanism of viral infections associated with cancers (e.g. Epstein-Barr and Hodgkin's lymphoma, HPV and cervical cancer).

Re:Bible Code?

[smellsofbikes]

What matters here is statistically significant matches. Pretend for a second that DNA is C code. If you're reading a long stretch of code and suddenly run across a #define ; void main(void) { int virus, x; ... and so forth, you know that you're looking at a chunk of code that's not supposed to be there and you know that everything between that { and the matching } is part of the stuff that's not supposed to be there -- and it might be several kilobytes of wrong DNA. In the case of genes, the #define/main stuff is a group of genes known as promoters and repressers and stuff like that, which are preambles that provide a control system for the DNA replication machinery so it can tell where to start reading and when to replicate a section, and most viruses have similar setups since they have to fool the cellular machinery into thinking it's replicating its own DNA.

The complication comes in that DNA replication is lossy, but evolution is conservative. So if random changes creep into critical stretches of DNA, called conserved sequences, bad things will happen to the cell. If changes creep into DNA that isn't currently functional, as is the case with endogenous retroviruses or other viral material that got stashed in but didn't end up producing a virus for whatever reason, those changes stick around since the DNA isn't expressed: there's no evolutionary pressure to maintain the code, so it slowly degrades.

The rate at which it degrades is reasonably constant. DNA polymerases have a measurable, consistent error rate. So your old viral code slowly accumulates errors, but it's still recognizeable: you know what you're seeing when you read #defne <virus.h>. A nice side-effect of this is that, since the replication error rate is fairly constant, you can also tell roughly how long a chunk of viral material has been in the DNA by the number of errors it has accumulated compared to a reference genome.

So as a long answer to a short question, you don't look for six-base correlation, you look for a 95% correlation over several thousand sequential bases before you announce you've found a virus-like pattern.

Re:Bible Code?

[lyml]

There are 4^3000 (about 1.5*10^1806) different 3000 letter works (if you only have 4 characters). The odds of finding your specific one in a 3 trillion collection of random letters is so small, you can't even imagine how small it is. (approx 1 in 2*10^1794)

But let's try anyway. Imagine playing the universal lottery. You are supposed to pick one subatomic particle in the entire universe, and if you choose the correct one you get 1 nickle, the odds of winning is about 1 in 10^80, if you were to enter that lottery a billion trillion times a second (10^21) by the time all protons in the universe would have decayed the likelyhood that you would have won even once would be so small that you could not even imagine. Never the less.

Now imagine playing that lottery one time for each billion trillion times times you look through a different set of random characters (with each set being 3 trillion characters). After having won that lottery, not once, but enough times to build a tower of your nickles 1000 times longer than the circumference of the entire universe the likelyhood of you having found a matching set to your 3000 character set would be so close to 0, that you still can not even imagine how small it is.

So my guess would be that this virus dna didn't just appear by chance in the dna of humans.

Re:Bible Code?

[SteveWoz]

The Creator is actually an infinite number of monkeys?

Re:Bible Code?

[BobMcD]

Genesis shows that Genesis is wrong, so you're kind of going the long-way about proving your point.

Within that one book, we have two mutually exclusive stories.

Sequence A: God created all the plants, animals, etc, and then created man 'in his image'

Sequence B: God created the male human, each type of animal, and then the female human

These do not compute, and my suspicion is that 'B' is man's hubris altering the original tale.

Furthermore, there's little in 'A' that precludes evolution, if anything. In fact, man could well have been one of the animals, with the gift of sentience being the act of being 'created in his image'. This also rather neatly answers the question of where Cain's wife came from...

In short, it is possible for a rational person to read the bible, and science and Christianity are not in fact mutually exclusive, despite being to locate minor nits.

Not surprising, given how DNA actually works

[IronDragon]

This is a fairly good little video that explains how RNA monomers end up naturally forming into longer polymer chains. Roughly 95% of our DNA is basically crap that only exists because at some point in the past, it was better at copying itself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6QYDdgP9eg

Re:Not surprising, given how DNA actually works

[Gotung]

Actually I'm pretty sure 100% of our DNA is basically crap that only exists because at some point in the past it was better at copying itself ;)

Re:Not surprising, given how DNA actually works

[corbettw]

Actually I'm pretty sure 100% of our DNA is basically crap that only exists because at some point in the past it was better at copying itself ;)

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.

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.

But I use antivirus!!!!

[master_p]

Doesn't Norton protect me from such stuff?

Re:But I use antivirus!!!!

[Krneki]

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

Revelation

[schmidt349]

I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here, Mr. Malda. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague and we are the cure.

Re:Revelation

[ElectricTurtle]

To be pedantic, the difference between humans and animals is usually called reason, but in fact it's probably more specific if less poetic to call it 'problem solving'. Animals don't 'live in equilibrium' per se because that implies that they know what they're doing, as though they're thinking 'oh... I'll eat exactly this much and no more because that will mess things up!' Pfff I'll bet somewhere there's some green whackjobs who think that's exactly the romantic notion going through the brains of animals. (In fact, there are predators that kill even after they are full, just to kill. I remember watching a documentary about sea turtles and watching them hatch and try to make their way to the sea, and predatory birds were attacking them, first to eat them, but even after that they just kept killing and leaving the dead baby turtles there to rot.) Anyway, I'm rambling, point is, animals expand as far as they can. They consume as much as they can, whenever and where-ever they can, and reproduce as often as possible. What determines their numbers ultimately are things like the rate at which their consumed resources replenish and the rate at which they otherwise die from predation/disease/accidents/age, not some kind of instinctive population control.

So the contrast is, an animal, insofar as it thinks, thinks 'I will eat x' and then when x is scarce it thinks 'oh shit there isn't enough x!' Then depending on luck, it dies. Whereas humans think 'I like to eat x' and when x becomes scarce humans think 'well, this sucks, there isn't enough x anymore. Maybe I can eat something else? How about this? Ew. No, not that. How about this other thing? Meh, it's ok. Maybe I can cook it? What things could I do, or do in concert with others, that might restore the natural abundancy of x and/or allow x to be produced in an environment I control?' Yeah. That's why human population keeps growing, moving, adapting, and animals just have to suck it up. They can't solve resource problems creatively.

(Viruses aren't creative either, they and other micro-organisms just have such fast life cycles that it allows them to find mutations that positively affect their survival at a higher rate. In other words they adapt quickly by chance, humans adapt quickly by decisions.

Re:Revelation

[Maximum Prophet]

In fact, there are predators that kill even after they are full, just to kill. I remember watching a documentary about sea turtles and watching them hatch and try to make their way to the sea, and predatory birds were attacking them, first to eat them, but even after that they just kept killing and leaving the dead baby turtles there to rot.

A pure animal whose actions are controlled by evolution of instinct, would stop killing to preserve the food supply. People killed the plains buffaloes just because they liked killing them, and to deny resources for the native Americans.

Of course, there may be a evolutionary advantage for the birds to kill the baby turtles. They might be a common food, and killing extra turtles might reduce competition for that food supply. Alternately, killing the extra baby turtles might actually increase the supply of adult turtles by weeding out the weak. Killing certain baby turtles might actually increase the bird's food supply in the long run.

Either that, or...

[Nux'd]

They really need to stop using thier gene sequencers to search for porn.

Poor Summary

[Dr. Eggman]

The real news here doesn't appear to be that endogenization has occured through our past (OK, maybe the 8% number is news; I don't know about the numbers...) but instead that a virus, bornavirus, is displaying this property. This is news because bornaviruses are not retroviruses (previously the only know virus-types to produce endogenous copies.) Furthermore, the article seems to suspect that this virus may have ties to the schizophrenia and mood disorders...

Which one?

[davidwr]

Oh wait, the article says "the genomes of humans and other mammals contain DNA derived from the insertion of bornaviruses" plural. My bad.

What a crappy press release

[RNLockwood]

So 8% of my DNA comes from a virus and not from my ancestors? I guess that means that I was infected with the DNA after conception and for some reason it's not heritable since I didn't get any from my ancestors. The big story, then, is that there is a mechanism that excludes the viral DNA during meiosis.

Dr Feschotte must have cringed when he read the release.

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.

Mammals

[Anonymous Coward]

Google for placenta and endogenous (as in endogenous virus). The placenta uses a lot of viral code, to the extent that it might be more virus than anything else. It also sheds a lot of viruses. The placenta is almost a different life form.

BTW, the Wikipedia entry shows that the "8%" number was known as long as 6 years ago.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endogenous_retrovirus

Re:Mammals

[MightyMartian]

ERVs have been known about for some time and are, in fact, one of the "killer" evidences for evolution. You can actually trace lineages with these genes, and they are useful for dating the splits between related lineages. For instance, chimps and humans share more ERVs than, say, humans and baboons. It's difficult to support that observation via Creationism, unless you proclaim the insipid "that's the way God wants it", but evolution explains it very neatly.

Re:Mammals

[canajin56]

"That's the way God wanted it" isn't the only way to support the observation of genes existing in multiple species, in a way that seems to imply inheritance. How about "God made life using OO programming"? Why would he start from scratch for every species, instead of just using copy & paste? If you really think about it...hacked together in 6 days, spaghetti code where 80% seems to be junk that doesn't even do anything, and is incredibly hard to decipher...God made us in PERL! Perl supports multiple inheritance, which explains the appearance of "viruses" transplanting genes from one species to another, unrelated species!

Re:Mammals

[Seakip18]

I like to think that God was a smart enough creator and made sure there were plenty of chances for early life to get upgrades along the way. Not that God sprinkled magic viruses on chimps and viola, but rather that's how it worked out given a few hundred-million years of life.

I never quite got how folks think the earth is only 3000 years old and that Dinosaurs never really existed, etc. I'd think it'd be alot easier to explain how creation and evolution fit than deny any evidence of evolution and dinosaurs.

But, I s'pose it's all choosing which myth and facts to believe in and which to not. Plus, life is a lot more comfortable when your sure what you believe is true and everything contrary is a lie. Religion is just a nice container to organize it all with.

Shoot..off topic...

uh....What'd be even MORE interesting is to compare those divided lineages NOW and see if the viral DNA that originally existed still does in it's original form. If not, what's going to account for the changes(which is like finding a specific needle(s) in a stack of needles)?

Re:Mammals

[pwfffff]

The fact that he finished ahead of schedule seems to support this. Why custom tailor DNA when you can use that whole 7th day to rest?

Re:Mammals

[francium de neobie]

"That's the way God ... using copy & paste? If you really think about it...hacked together in 6 days, spaghetti code where 80% seems to be junk that doesn't even do anything, and is incredibly hard to decipher...

So what the Creationists are saying is basically...

God is a either a chump working at Microsoft, or a really bad software contractor who writes Perl?

This sucks, I want a refund.

Re:Mammals

[j-beda]

"...spaghetti code..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster

Who owns the copyright?

[codewarren]

Considering the necessity of viruses to have some "host-like" code within them, is it not just as possible that viruses got most of their code from hosts rather than vice versa?

Re:Who owns the copyright?

[smellsofbikes]

I'm not quite sure what you're asking. If what you're asking is "how can you tell the difference between originally human DNA and originally virus DNA" my first answer would be that neither one is original. However, past that, one thing that stands out is that viruses have tremendous selection pressure to economize (because the faster you replicate the faster you spread, and the speed of replication is linearly proportional to the length of the genome.) As a result, evolution removes anything that isn't unneeded, and in fact some viruses stack genes on top of one another. To explain that I have to do a bit of cell bio: every three DNA bases code for one protein, so you read DNA by threes. Since this provides for 64 combinations and there are only 20-ish proteins, there is what's called genetic degeneracy: multiple codons map to each protein. As a result, there are lots of viruses that encode one protein by threes, and taking advantage of degeneracy, code for *another* protein by shifting one over and again reading by threes. Given the sequence abc def ghi jkl, one protein is produced that reads off abc:A, def:B,..., while another protein is produced that reads off bcd:G, efg:H,..., and so forth. In some cases, viral DNA can even be read backwards to produce yet another protein.

So if you're looking at a chunk of DNA and it appears to be continuous, particularly continuous and overlapping, it's very likely recently viral, while if it has big chunks of other stuff in it, long promotion/repression sequences, lots of regulatory stuff, it's probably not recently viral. Does that answer what you're wondering?

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.

Damn it.

[UncHellMatt]

She told me she was TESTED!

Re:Ob. Matrix quote

[causality]

Humans are a virus!

Before the Matrix, there was Bill Hicks: "I'm tired of this back-slapping 'isn't humanity neat' bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay?"

Re:Ob. Matrix quote

[ShieldW0lf]

The moral of the story is, cannibalism really does allow you to take your enemies strength. That's why we eat Jesus' flesh on Sundays, so we can absorb his holy virus and become like God.

Linux kernel

[MaGGuN]

8% of the Linux kernel code comes from Linus... Don't shoot the messenger.

HERVs are ancestral

[angry jimmy]

The posted summary is somewhat misleading. Human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) are responsible for ~8% of the human genome sequence, but these things haven't been active for a long time in terms of human history - so the 8% that's in your genome now did come from your parents, and their parents etc. until you get back to the time many thousands of years ago when HERVs were actively creating new insertions. The linked summary is a summary of a new finding in which the 'endogenization' of a new class of virus known as a Bornavirus is reported (which exists in only a few copies in humans)

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[Anonymous Coward]

That's why I eat copious amounts of pasta, so that I, too, may be touched by His Noodly Appendage.

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[jhoegl]

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.

A Woman's Perspective

[d34dluk3]

It's the Y Chromosome

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.

Research was conducted by Keizo Tomonaga in Japan

[jestill]

From the article the research was "led by Professor Keizo Tomonaga at Osaka University in Japan". The article that Cedric wrote was just an opinion piece discussing the research by Dr. Tomonaga.

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[spun]

Commit yourself daily to serving The Lord

With some fava beans and a nice Chianti, fthfthfthfth.

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[TheCarp]

They are just jealous because they never got that transubstantiation miracle to work right. That or the 2000 year old zombie flesh tastes conspicuously like unleavened bread... which tastes conspicuously like cardboard. Frankly, I think that they would do a lot better if they started out with a pork roast. At the very least it would require a bit less suspension of disbelief when the Saviour is rolling around in your mouth.

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[Kiaser Zohsay]

Is Teller God? Should I worship him?

Why don't you ask him yourself?

Because he wouldn't answer you.

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[nedlohs]

How is that hypocrisy?

Raising the dead, walking on water, healing the sick, etc, etc. All can be done* by God as a miracle or by demons as witchcraft. It's not hypocrisy, it's caring about the source more than the action.

Having another religion is usually punishable, again not hypocrisy just standard religion.

* According to believers, a set I'm not a member of so I really should stop talking about their business...

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[biryokumaru]

Turning people into newts.

Hey, he got better.

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[InsaneProcessor]

Thank you. Words of a wise one are always appreciated!

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[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...

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[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Did you miss the part in the Bible where God beats the crap out of other gods, like Leviathan and the Egyptian Pharoah's god (the whole sticks-into-snakes bit)?

He is a jealous god, and thou shalt have no other gods before him! And he means real, existing gods, not pseudo-gods like money and power.

In any case, we know this virus thing is false, since God made everybody, and would hand-craft the DNA, so if it resembles anything in a virus, it's just coincidence.

Evolutionary pressure

[mollog]

I'll offer proof that this is actually happening; a species that follows human, the Eastern Gray Squirrel, has adapted to cars. Previously, they had an inborn, instinctive behavior of darting in circles when confronted by a danger. This was thought to be an adaptation that helped them escape predation by birds of prey. But this was maladaptive when confronted by a speeding vehicle.

These days, the gray squirrel runs in a straight line when it is in danger. This is probably good news for birds of prey, but squirrel populations are thriving, so I doubt that birds are as big a problem as cars are.

I don't doubt that our environment is promoting genetic variations that are compatible with technology. That meme has been suggested before.

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[flitty]

Furthermore, I understand that some christian branches, such as Mormons believe what you say, where the water/bread is symbolic, but as far as offical Roman Catholic Church doctrine, Transubstantiation does occur, and is not symbolic. Unless everything i've been taught about the catholics has been wrong, from all sources except for some guy on Slashdot.

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[Grishnakh]

You sound like a Protestant, and the view you describe is the Protestant view. Catholics are about a billion strong, and believe that the bread and wine really are flesh and blood; it is not "uncommon" in the least. Your statement is like saying the view that God lives on a planet called Kolob is "uncommon", when in fact (as ridiculous as it sounds) it's believed by millions of Mormons. Or that the idea that we're all infected by "body thetans" who give us mental diseases is "uncommon", when all the Scientologists (I don't know how many there are) believe this.

Don't underestimate the ability of religion to make people believe utterly ridiculous things.

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[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.

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[prezpwns]

Amen

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[Knara]

Yeah, but Hugo Weaving said it with such style. Hicks had some funny stuff, but really, he was like a more insightful Sam Kinison who didn't yell as much.

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[IndustrialComplex]

Because he wouldn't answer you.

So like god then?

8 Percent!

[bitphr3ak]

I think I'll call in sick!

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[Bobb Sledd]

You know, there's a real easy way to tell: If when the source is raising the dead, if you hear beautiful and calming and serene music in a major chord mode, then it is good. If you hear banging on a piano or dissonant violins, then evil.

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[BobMcD]

The ability for a free human to decide what he does or does not believe is about as far from 'unimportant' as one can possibly get.

You can be insensitive to it if you wish, but this is a thin excuse at best.

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[pluther]

Yes, because there's no real difference between pulling people out of their homes and torturing them to death and making fun of people's ignorance in an online forum.

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[Chris Burke]

Frankly, I think that they would do a lot better if they started out with a pork roast.

Well then you'd start another holy war over whether or not it's sacrilegious to smother the Host in barbecue sauce.

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[PRMan]

On top of all that, the fact that "The Flood" actually has even earlier recorded sources (Sumerian, for example) just make the whole thing even more, well not maybe comical, but at least mildly amusing.

Yes, amazingly almost every culture on earth has a global flood story with a single boat, a bunch of animals and a negotiation of sorts with a god or gods. There are over 200 of them, involving nearly every culture that was on earth in early history.

For instance, this one from China, where the person is even named Ndrao-Ya.

http://www.archives.ecs.soton.ac.uk/miao/songs/TranslatedSongs/m131/m131tr.pdf

Here's a handy chart to summarize the similarities:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v2/n2/flood-legends

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[interkin3tic]

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

Ahhh science, where one logical theory is considered wrong but another one can be considered right.
Hypocrisy loves science too when you oversimplify like you did with religion.

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[BobMcD]

Oh, I disagree completely.

Atheism - "I do not believe there is a god"

Anti-theism - "There is not a god"

The former is within the realm of personal conviction. The latter requires a leap of faith, ergo religion.

The strongest position that a non-religous atheist can produce is something along the lines of "I am not convinced". When you leap to "you are all idiots", you have entered a position that you cannot support with facts.

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[cyphercell]

No. Absolutely not. Atheists simply demand the same respect as the rest of you fucking nut jobs. It's your right to call Catholics and Atheists nuts. Just like it's my right to say all Christians are nuts. You fucking shitnut freaks are perfectly will to side with an atheist that rants against Islam and then get all fucked up when the atheist turns in your direction.

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[hairyfeet]

I don't think Bill and Sam were anything alike at all. Sam was an ex-preacher and a showman, and while he would do the occasional dark bits he would always lighten them up by going over the top. Bill OTOH hated hypocrisy in all its forms and you could tell didn't really like the bullshit and insanity he saw around him every day. He was MUCH more dark in his humor and very acidic in his tone.

What Bill and Sam sadly have in common is the fact that we haven't had any really thought provoking comics since they passed. But I would say their individual styles are really very different from each other. Sam was more playful, Bill much more angry and dark.

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[HaZardman27]

we're not talking about some strange, obscure cult here...

I'm not even an atheist and I think Catholicism is indeed a strange, obscure cult.

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[im_thatoneguy]

I don't think it's a leap to say "I'm not convinced. And your arguments have no foundation." In fact I would assume those who aren't convinced aren't convinced BECAUSE the opposition's arguments have no foundation.

I don't believe there are Unicorns. Ergo I think people who believe in Unicorns are idiots. I'm not anti-unicorns, I've just evaluated the argument made for unicorns (of the mythical magical variety) and found no evidence for it. Since I've found no evidence for it, and exhaustively searched I can conclude that those who do believe in Unicorns and have the same information as myself have an irrational and inaccurate position--in other words idiots.

I also think people who believe in Crop Circles are idiots. Does that make it a religion?

It's true that technically every atheist should be a "Agnostic" in that "there might be a god but I see no evidence for it" but we don't make that distinction in any other area of life. I don't say "I don't think there's a monster standing behind me but there might be therefore I'm undecided as to whether a monster is standing behind me." we just jump to the conclusion with the understanding that nothing in the world is certain.

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[Flere Imsaho]

"we're not talking about some strange, obscure cult here..."

No, we're talking about a fucking huge stange cult.

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[Opportunist]

So with more MSG from all the chinese food I might become the next Buddha? About time, I already have had his body for a while.

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[Bigjeff5]

Christianity as I understand it, is descended from Catholicism, as Catholicism is descended from Judaism.

Your understanding is incorrect.

The Catholic Church claims the Apostle Peter as its founder. There were, however, ten other Apostles who began the spread of Christianity (Judas, of course, commited suicide instead of seeking redemption, cutting the total to 11 from 12). Within a few hundred years, the Catholic church became the dominant church in Europe, but it was by no means the only Christian church, simply the largest.

It also has the distinction of being one of the oldest Christian denominations. You could technically say that the Protestant denominations stemmed from Catholicism, but it would be about like saying Athiesm stemmed from Theism - Protestantism was a rejection of Catholicism and a return to the roots of Christianity. This is why the Bibles of the Protestant denominations of Christianity contain only the books written by the Apostles and the first few great missionaries who came behind them. The Catholic Bible is supplimented by a number of various books of tradition that have been passed down through the centuries, which other denominations don't ascribe to. The customs of the priesthood in Catholicism are also very, very different from other Christian denominations. The idea that the Pope speaks the word of God directly, for example, is not found in most other Christian denominations.

That said, you can usually simply cut away parts of Catholicism and get one of the various Protestant denominations, because they are built on the same foundation.

If your interpretation of Christianity was looser, rather than tighter, you would have ignored the differences and stuck to the similarities. But you did not do that, hence the argument. The idea of transsubstantiation is almost exclusively a Catholic or Catholic based idea. MOST people who read the passage where Christ broke bread with his deciples and said "This is my body, do this in rememberance of me" recognize that he was making a metaphore, and the point is to remember his sacrifice not get caught up in eating the body of Christ. Obviously that's not what happened the first time, why would it be happening now? It was essentially a Papal decree that made transubstantiation doctrine, for no real reason, and it's that sort of thing that led to Martin Luther founding the Protestant church. Essentially the only denominations that believe in transubstantiation are denominations that originated by churches that were catholic in doctrine, but for one reason or another were cut off from the main church. Russian Orthodox is like this, and is very very similar to Catholicism because of it.

If you want proof of how different the denominations are, and why you can't simply lump them all together as you did, go have Mass at a Catholic church and then run down to Baptist or Pentacostal church (Baptist and Pentacostal are themselves almost opposites) for a service. You will see what almost two different religions. Then run over to a Mormon church, which is as different from Protestant as Protestant is from Catholic.

The differences are so great that many in each group do not consider the others to be truly Christian, and that instead they still need salvation.

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[Opportunist]

Speak for yourself, I can hear God talking all the time in my head.

If only he finally realized I don't understand ancient hebrew...

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[BitZtream]

No, atheists don't 'demand' anything really. Atheists are generally pretty normal people, just like most people who are religious are normal.

Nutjobs, who also happen to be atheists demand retarded shit just like religous nutjobs, they tend to be more 'scientific nutjobs'. And by that I mean that they seem to worship something they call science instead of religion, yet blindly ignore scientific method in favor of blindly believing what some guy wrote in a book/journal/website.

Same nut jobs, different books, same ignorance, and as you are so quick to show us ... the same name calling and he said she said.

Perhaps before calling someone a 'shitnut freak' for 'ranting against ' a religious group, you should consider not 'ranting against a(ll) religious group(s). Its cool though, you've obviously got plenty of angst to work out, you go on being mad at everyone in the world ... nutjob.

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[cyphercell]

Here is my point. Every fucking time I miss one single infinitesimally insignificant bit of minutia regarding religion somebody's got a tirade of religious bullshit I should understand before I say something. Fuck you(laugh, my use of profanity is generally stylistic). Please understand, that I don't need a bachelors of religious studies to laugh at a joke about the absurdity of some religious practice, I don't care if it's Jews vs Catholics vs Islam. I don't need a fine grained and detailed history of religion. It's just not that important. That's what I want. My right to be an atheist and just not have to know the difference between one christian and the other, because I can safely assure you the last thing I want is to sit in one church or the other just so I can tell the difference between a joke about Catholics and a joke about Muslims. For crying out loud, I KNOW that Catholics were the ones the original post was describing, my point is that I don't need every other christian online jumping up and telling me that the joke was not about their particular Christianity. Or the absurdity of several of them claiming that their Christianity is more common than Catholicism. In my world (which obviously varies greatly from the real one), the only proper stance for a religious person to take in that state is that of protecting their fellow Christian's right to believe whatever kind of crazy shit they want. Not to jump and start screaming "NOT ME".

Anyways, thanks for taking me seriously, even if you did completely ignore the fact that I am not looking for an exhaustive religious history that *everyone* will eventually wind up arguing over.

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[RianDouglas]

The current ideology that is being taken to the extreme is Atheism.

What are the tenets of this "Atheism" ideology? As far as I can tell, the total content of "Atheism" is a lack of belief in, or denial of the existence of, a god or gods. Doesn't seem to be much of an ideology to me :-)