" We are creatures controlled by viruses , " Luis Villarreal , a prof of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at the University of California at Irvine , tellsNew Scientist . He ’s referring to the endogenous retrovirus , or ERVs , that make up about 9 percent of the human genome . Throughout human ontogeny , these retroviruses would invade our genome , at first causing destruction and disease — but as our species evolved a immunity or tolerance , these viruses would become woven into the fabric of our evolution . According to the theories of some scientist , this is how sealed species vary from one another . A virus force an evolution that gets passed down if it bear witness good in some way . It was largely thought that the effect of these retroviruses ceased to have an impact on our doings and evolution thousands of class ago .
But arecent discoveryis challenging that laying claim . While canvass the midget pile of just eight cellular phone that contain 3 - day - old human embryos , Joanna Wysocka and her confrere at Stanford University in California ascertain , in addition to desoxyribonucleic acid from the parent , evidence of HERVK , the most recent ERV to take root in our DNA , likely some 200,000 years ago .
And HERVK is n’t consist sleeping in these former fertilized egg : experiment revealed that the computer virus appear to produce a protein that keep serious virus like influenza from get across the conceptus . It also looks like aiding in translate genetic instruction to the cellular protein factories . What was once a deadly virus has evolve to be crucial to defense and evolution of our earliest ego .
Patrick Forterre of the Pasteur Institute in Paris believes that this corroborates the possibility that retroviruses are crucial to species discrepancy , tell , " It shows that the protein products of a comparatively ' late ' retrovirus integrating are present very early on in the embryo , and could be affect in some critical developmental programmes . "
[ h / tNew Scientist ]
