

8 percent of human genetic material comes from a virus - prat
http://www.uta.edu/ucomm/mediarelations/press/2010/01/genome-biologist-reports.php

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carbocation
The original article is here:
[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7277/full/463039a...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7277/full/463039a.html)
(paywall). But this is basically a review. The actual research in this week's
Nature is not by this UT Arlington lab, but instead by Horie, et al, from
Tokyo (
[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7277/full/nature0...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7277/full/nature08695.html)
)

That 8% of human DNA comes from viruses is interesting, but not new; this has
been known for at least a few years now. What is interesting about the new
findings is that this is the first non-retrovirus found to insert DNA into the
human genome.

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kentosi
I read a Readers Digest article along these lines a while back and found it
increadibly fascinating.

From what I remember, our DNA is riddled with bits of ancient virus DNA.
Explanations as to why these have lasted so long were uncertain, but
researchers have made some pretty impressive speculations.

For example, viruses, in order to survive as a species, must not only feed of
their host (the human), but must ensure that the human survives in order for
it to keep living. Furthermore, viruses compete with other viruses for food
(the human), and so if another virus ourbreak occurs then the resident virus
will, if you like, work with the human immune defence system to kill off the
new intruding virus. So they may have even been crucial to human survival at
some point.

There were further discussions about how these ancient viruses may have
affected human development (ie - the larger, tumour like brain, etc), but I
can't remember much of it.

I guess the only concrete point I can contribute here is that this is
definately nothing new.

------
daniel-cussen
Macros in DNA?

