[VadeRetro]

I'm disgusted that the author of the article doesn't really understand punctuated equilibrium, equating it with sort of a Goldsmith "Hopeful Monster" theory. But the idea that retrovirus material is in there still competing with the original host DNA for replication is new to me and fascinating. Intramural competition within the DNA strand!

[forsnax5]

I'm disgusted that the author of the article doesn't really understand punctuated equilibrium, equating it with sort of a Goldsmith "Hopeful Monster" theory.

I didn't read "sudden and unexpected changes" as "Hopeful Monster," but rather as "geologically sudden" (i.e. thousands of years).

Take a small, geographically isolated group of ancestral primates and give them an unusual but relatively benign viral infection that causes gradual changes in the geneome and, over a couple of hundred generations, this group becomes "different."

By the way, this idea means the "Intelligent Designer" is actually a bad cold... ;)

[VadeRetro]

Goldsmith

Goldschmidt, Richard.

[PatrickHenry]

... the idea that retrovirus material is in there still competing with the original host DNA for replication is new to me and fascinating. Intramural competition within the DNA strand!

This isn't my field, but it seems to me that once the material gets established in the DNA, it's no different from a mutated portion of the DNA. The DNA chain doesn't care where it came from.