Songbird Fossil Virus May Help Predict Pandemics

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers announced they found a fossil virus hiding in the most unexpected place: the chromosomes of several songbird species. This ancient virus resembles human hepatitis B virus. Finding this ancient virus will catalyze new lines of inquiry that may help scientists predict and prevent future human viral pandemics that originate in birds."

Comments

Reading comprehension 101

[Black Parrot]

TFArticle doesn't say that anyone was surprised to find the fossil in the chromosome. The surprise is that it's > 19 million years old.

(Creationist bashers can take delight in the fact the these viruses were previously thought to be only 6000 years old.)

DNA under selection rarely does nothing

[SpeleoNut]

I found these two statements in the article to be somewhat at odds with each other.
1. "The viruses that we found are very old, are integrated in the bird genome, and do not have the potential to encode any functional protein product," said Dr Gilbert. "So they do not have any effect in songbirds."
2. "a strikingly slow, long-term mutation rate that is 1,000 times slower than the viral [mutation] rates that had previously been estimated based on comparisons of currently circulating viral sequences only."
If the sequences are being in someway preserved they may well be having an effect. Perhaps not coding a protein themselves but altering the levels, timing or tissue specificity of gene expression in their vicinity. Also the presence of these similar sequences throughout the songbird genome can drive novel DNA recombination events which can result in new phenotypes, driving songbird evolution.