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.

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.