Ancient Virus DNA Discovery Could Be a Breakthrough In How Diseases Are Treated

concertina226 (2447056) writes "Understanding how retroviruses are passed down through our DNA could be the key to helping researchers re-programme normal cells to become stem cells for treating diseases. Researchers from Canada and Singapore have discovered that the ancient viruses which entered our ancestors' genomes thousands of years ago have altered the way our cells behave; the material left by dead viruses in our cells is the answer. 1,000 copies of one particular class of retroviruses, known as the human endogenous retrovirus HERV-H, is still in our genome, and while the HERV-H retrovirus DNA is dead and cannot replicate itself, it continues to send out messages telling the embryonic stem cell how to become other cells in the body, and this is what makes the cells pluripotent."

Comments

Not "thousands"

[bargainsale]

"which entered our ancestors' genomes thousands of years ago"

Millions. One might hope that errors of three orders of magnitude would be uncommon on Slashdot.

Re:Not "thousands"

[Opportunist]

More likely billions. If that "dead" virus DNA gives our cells the ability to specialize, they're pretty much the requirement for complex organisms that aren't just a collection of identical cells. And that in turn means that pretty much everything but single cell organism (and groups thereof) need that DNA sequence.

Re:Not "thousands"

[bargainsale]

Exactly so. The actual article says "millions" though. Perhaps the submitter himself didn't read TFA?

Re:Not "thousands"

[Samantha Wright]

The oldest known animals only go back 665 million years. It's relatively unlikely that our cell differentiation mechanisms are much older than that, so "billions" is a bit overambitious.

Re:Not "thousands"

[ColdWetDog]

No,they're not required. That's the funny part. There are primates which do a wonderful job of going from fertilized egg to organism without the viral DNA. It's just that the viral DNA is very active in a class of stem cells and not active in other cells. It was thought that all of this 'junk DNA' - which includes most of the incorporated retrovirus DNA - didn't do anything.

Now they know it does something. Only in stem cells. That's weird. And fun. But it's not clear that this is useful or will cure cancer or allow you to get a date.

As usual, it's interesting science hyped beyond measure.

Doesn't sound right to me

[Alan Kennington]

There's too much that sounds wrong to me in this story.

1,000 copies of one particular class of retroviruses, known as the human endogenous retrovirus HERV-H, is still in our genome, and while the HERV-H retrovirus DNA is dead and cannot replicate itself, it continues to send out messages telling the embryonic stem cell how to become other cells in the body, and this is what makes the cells pluripotent.

Maybe the 1000 copies could be correct, but that sounds a bit too high. But the last phrase and this is what makes the cells pluripotent sounds quite wrong. Does this mean that pluripotency didn't happen before this virus got into the genome? This would have to be at least 600 million years ago then. I note that the date in Australia is now 1 April 2014 already.

Re:Doesn't sound right to me

[Altus]

I think we are looking at a bad summary as usually the articles dateline is March 31st, but thank you for reminding me to get off of the internet for the next ~48 hours.

High School 'Evolution', Maybe

[Firethorn]

This could pose a problem for evolution in court because one can no longer claim "evolution predicts a tree of life".

Not sure why. It's moving past where Evolution was taught when I was in High School, but in college and since this sort of stuff started popping up, first noticed with Bacteria, which turn out to share DNA quite often.

Indeed, I believe that the more complex methods of DNA transfer existing only weakens young-earth creationist arguments. Leaves them with less wiggle-room in trying to refute Evolution.

Remember, the core theory of 'evolution' doesn't require only the sexual method of DNA sharing, though that's perhaps the easiest to explain to kids. Bacteria sharing chunks of DNA coding for antibiotic resistance is getting into advanced territory.

Finding out that 'life' is more of a messy ball with lots of weird interconnects is more in line with what you'd expect from evolution than some sort of 'neat' process controlled by some sort of designer.

Darwin's Radio

[John Bokma]

Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear. I read it recently, and can recommend it.

Damn we've been assimilated, not once but a 1000 X

[Trax3001BBS]

200 types of cells making up the human body, and this "junk" tells them how to be themselves, and when.

"Not to worry though" - that's reassuring.