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AIDS Virus Can Hide In Bone Marrow
suraj.sun writes "The virus that causes AIDS can hide in the bone marrow, avoiding drugs and later awakening to cause illness, according to new research that could point the way toward better treatments for the disease. Dr. Kathleen Collins of the University of Michigan and her colleagues report in this week's edition of the journal Nature Medicine that the HIV virus can infect long-lived bone marrow cells that eventually convert into blood cells. The virus is dormant in the bone marrow cells, she said, but when those progenitor cells develop into blood cells, it can be reactivated and cause renewed infection. The virus kills the new blood cells and then moves on to infect other cells, said. In recent years, drugs have reduced AIDS deaths sharply, but patients need to keep taking the medicines for life or the infection comes back, Dr. Collins said."
you are implying that a virus competely changes your entire genetic make up. and this is simply not the case. it changes cellular dna to instructs those infected cells to mass produce new hiv. You wont be growing wings anytime soon.
Transposons would like to disagree! These make up upto 50% of the human genome (only 2% are actual Genes)! They are essentially viruses trapped in your cell, they can still duplicate, but they lost their ability to leave the cell. Selfish Genes essentially. Luckily most of them are inactive by now.
It is believed that the us Eutheria, i.e. mammals with a placenta, gained the ability to have one common circulatory system for two different organisms by using viral DNA to keep the immune system from going nuts about this.