
Virus stole poison genes from black widow spider - kawera
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37632616
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Herodotus38
Robert Weinberg's The Biology of Cancer has a great chapter on the early
history of cancer research and its connection with virology and a chance
occurrence leading to discovery.

There was a chicken breeder who noticed that some of his birds were getting
tumors and he brought them to Rous, who exposed healthy bird cells to an
extract of the tumor. He was able to figure out that in this case cancer was
being transmitted by a virus. Later analysis showed that the virus itself
doesn't cause cancer, but that this particular strain was "lucky" and picked
up an oncogene (basically took a normal tyrosine kinase gene that is involved
in the cell cycle from a chicken and incorporated it into the virus, making
cell replication more rapid).

This happens all the time with retroviruses in the wild. I find it interesting
because the key to the virus' ability to cause tumors actually lies in using
the normal cells' own machinery. Sort of like uncovering an ancient
archeological site and decoding a text only to see it is about your
civilization!

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contingencies
_Sort of like uncovering an ancient archeological site and decoding a text
only to see it is about your civilization!_

Sounds like a great premise for a roguelike :)

~~~
dmoy
Isn't something roughly like this the premise of Stephen Baxter's manifold
trilogy? Idk, it's been awhile...

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cronjobber
> "genetic theft" ... "chunks of arachnid DNA were probably stolen"

...wrote the journalist who also moonshines as RIAA pamphleteer?

(I find it more illuminating to think of the _gene_ being the active party,
hitching a ride on a new vehicle.)

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jacquesm
Interesting. So, would that count as prior art for any patents that are based
on moving genetic material from one organism to another?

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Mtinie
I didn't see anything in the article that referenced this, but why is the
assumption being made that the virus acquired the genes from black widows and
not the other way around?

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SturgeonsLaw
Unless the virus injected the gene into the black widows' gametes, the
introduced gene would leave the spider population when that individual spider
died. It's possible, but lowers the odds of an already unlikely process.

Meanwhile, viruses slurp up DNA from their hosts all the time.

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phyzome
Well, many Wolbachia infect the gonads of their hosts...

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OrthoMetaPara
> The researchers think the virus uses latrotoxin to enter animal cells and
> reach the bacteria that it targets.

How would it do that? The phage can't synthesize latrotoxin itself, so it
would need to instruct its bacterial host to produce it. Can bacteria even
produce this toxin properly, with all proper post-translational modifications?

Secondly, how is it even obtaining the spider DNA when it infects the
bacteria. I've heard of viruses packing extra nucleic acid from their hosts
into their particulate forms when they replicate, but how does the spider DNA
get into the bacteria so that this can happen?

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theparanoid
Post translationally processing is done by the eukaryotic host cell. The
section "Toxin activation by eukaryotic furin cleavage" has details -
[http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13155](http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13155).

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sidcool
Evolution has some very interesting ways to increase chances of survival.
Still most of the species that ever lived are extinct today. Those alive have
beaten great odds.

Viruses are the enigma of evolution. Are they just chemicals, or living?

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whyenot
> Viruses are the enigma of evolution. Are they just chemicals, or living?

Biology is full of edge cases like this. For a few more examples, google
"species problem". Human beings often like to classify things into discrete
groups, but that doesn't necessarily map onto the natural world all that well.

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laumars
indeed. This reminds me of the arguments about whether fungus is a plant or an
animal.

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GnarfGnarf
Wouldn't "copied" be more appropriate? Unless the spider has patented or
copyrighted the genes.

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codereflection
Tangent: It's venom, not poison.

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dredmorbius
Oh, look at what the cat drug in! You pedantic use-the-word-wright peoples
make me nauseous. ;-)

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codereflection
Glad to upset you. ;]

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dredmorbius
I see what you did there.

Though I believe it's I who should be upsetting you.

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codereflection
One can try...

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kyled
Very cool!

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smmnyc
It took me way too long to realize the article was not referring to a computer
virus.

