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Dec. 17th, 2012 05:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
respectorcistLet's talk about endogenous retroviruses (ERVs).
Retroviruses insert their genetic material (RNA) into a host's genome (DNA) in order to reproduce. The cell reads their genetic instructions along with its own and then ends up being instructed to build new viruses. So it makes a fucked up sort of intuitive sense that sometimes a retrovirus sort of gets trapped in the host genome in a reproductive cell ... and ends up passed down from one generation to the next. Right?
Yep.
In fact, ERVs make up as much as 8% of a permanent part of all of our DNA.
Most of these fossil viruses are broken and fragmented and crippled by mutation, but some are intact and can be read and identified today. Some are even suspected to have an active genetic role in evolution.
Retroviruses insert their genetic material (RNA) into a host's genome (DNA) in order to reproduce. The cell reads their genetic instructions along with its own and then ends up being instructed to build new viruses. So it makes a fucked up sort of intuitive sense that sometimes a retrovirus sort of gets trapped in the host genome in a reproductive cell ... and ends up passed down from one generation to the next. Right?
Yep.
In fact, ERVs make up as much as 8% of a permanent part of all of our DNA.
Most of these fossil viruses are broken and fragmented and crippled by mutation, but some are intact and can be read and identified today. Some are even suspected to have an active genetic role in evolution.
