Posted on 10/05/2017 5:17:19 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Our DNA contains roughly 100,000 pieces of viral DNA. Altogether, they make up about 8 percent of the human genome. And scientists are only starting to figure out what this viral DNA is doing to us.
...
Some of our ancient viruses may be protecting us from disease; others may be raising our risks for cancer, among other conditions. “It’s not an either-or — are these things good or bad? It’s a lot more complicated than that,” Dr. Katzourakis said in an interview. “We’re barely at the beginning of this research.”
Most of our viral DNA comes from one group in particular: retroviruses...
Just as we have defenses against free-living viruses, we have also developed defenses against endogenous retroviruses. Our cells can coat their DNA with molecules that suppress viral genes, for example.
But sometimes these viral genes manage to switch on anyway. In many kinds of tumor cells, for instance, scientists find proteins produced by endogenous retroviruses. That discovery has fueled a long-running debate: Do endogenous retroviruses help cause cancer?
Recent studies suggest they can. A team of French researchers engineered healthy human cells to make a viral protein found in many tumors and watched the cells grow in a petri dish.
The protein caused the cells to behave in some suspiciously cancer-like ways. They changed shape, as cancer cells do, becoming long and skinny. And they also started to move across the dish.
In addition, the viral protein caused the cells to switch on other genes that have been linked to cancer.
But John M. Coffin, a virologist at Tufts University, suspects there’s less to these viral proteins than meets the eyes. He speculates that in many cases, cancer cells make viral proteins only because they are switching on genes willy-nilly — both human and viral genes alike.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
from the FRchives:The Scars of Evolution:"The most remarkable aspect of Todaro's discovery emerged when he examined Homo Sapiens for the 'baboon marker'. It was not there... Todaro drew one firm conclusion. 'The ancestors of man did not develop in a geographical area where they would have been in contact with the baboon. I would argue that the data we are presenting imply a non-African origin of man millions of years ago.'"
What Our Bodies Tell Us
About Human Origins
by Elaine Morgan
If you’ve never been in a conversation with a geneticist, they must have a test which recruits narcissists.
“God complex” is too kind a descriptor, yet that is the future of modern medicine.
Glad I won’t be around for it.
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