Once a virus is inside our DNA... can it be removed?
Also, lets say you want to get rid of your epstein barr virus that has invaded & now lives in every one of your cells... is it living in our cells, or is it just in our dna?
The human genome is full of viruses
21–30 of 118 posts
Re: The human genome is full of viruses
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I've always wondered how such a relatively small amount of data could describe the massive complexity of a full-size organism I'm not convinced it fully does. Remember that DNA is never in isolation; there's always a cell that's been replicated and passed down to offspring, so there's interplay between the hardware cell and software DNA. I also don't know much about biology and only took a high school class, so don…
I think what you’re describing here is called “epigenetics,” or how different genes are expressed or not expressed due to environmental and other outside factors such as stress, etc...
Maybe in a way. I think they are driving at an orthogonal argument. The DNA is more or less useless without cells. It seems like the machinery of the cell carries information about the whole of the organism in an abstract sense.
Re: The human genome is full of viruses
#23I've always thought of DNA as mere "data". "This goes here, that goes there", etc. And I've always wondered how such a relatively small amount of data could describe the massive complexity of a full-size organism. But this makes it sound like DNA is data the way Lisp is data: it can contain procedures and transformations and meta-statements about itself, and even mutate during the course of being interpreted. That wo…
Yes, there are several layers of complexity that go beyond just the genetic sequence of a given gene.
The sequence of the DNA also impacts thing like folding of DNA which impacts expression.
And the intermediaries between the DNA and the protein (RNA), can also interact with the DNA itself to promote or retard expression.
It’s incredibly complex really.
Re: The human genome is full of viruses
#24There was an interesting article a while back on them playing a part in schizophrenia. "The Insanity Virus" https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/the-insanity-virus
Fantastic article!!
Re: The human genome is full of viruses
#25I've always thought of DNA as mere "data". "This goes here, that goes there", etc. And I've always wondered how such a relatively small amount of data could describe the massive complexity of a full-size organism. But this makes it sound like DNA is data the way Lisp is data: it can contain procedures and transformations and meta-statements about itself, and even mutate during the course of being interpreted. That wo…
Just in case this is not known, human generic code is more than just DNA.
Most important parts of what encodes us are:
- DNA - epigenetic markers on the DNA which modulate which parts of the DNA are active. You influence these and pass them on to your children (as men) and grandchildren (as women, as girls are born with all egg cells they'll ever have) - cell organelles which copy the DNA, ensure the cell has food and lives, etc. These tend to be independent cells that were at some point captured by our own cells. So they have their own genetic code. These you only inherit from your mother (dad gives half the DNA with epigenetic markers, mom the other half (also with markers) and everything else.
And of course much of what we are is shaped through gestation as well, I.e. the mother's body sends not just nutrients but also hormones etc that regulate gestation (and vice versa the child sends various messages to mom, up to even own cells in case of serious illness or accident or the mother).
Fascinating stuff.
Re: The human genome is full of viruses
#26There was an interesting article a while back on them playing a part in schizophrenia. "The Insanity Virus" https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/the-insanity-virus
Fantastic article!!
It is good isn't it. I just re-read it ten years after the original publication.
I googled and Perron's start-up GeNeuro is still going, trying to fix MS with an antibody against HERV-W. https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/geneuro-raises-eu17-5m...
Re: The human genome is full of viruses
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I've always wondered how such a relatively small amount of data could describe the massive complexity of a full-size organism I'm not convinced it fully does. Remember that DNA is never in isolation; there's always a cell that's been replicated and passed down to offspring, so there's interplay between the hardware cell and software DNA. I also don't know much about biology and only took a high school class, so don…
I think what you’re describing here is called “epigenetics,” or how different genes are expressed or not expressed due to environmental and other outside factors such as stress, etc...
I think the analogy would be something like:
DNA is the code. Epigenetics are config options which can be saved to a file and passed on. The cell is the machine which interprets the DNA + config options.
So there are three pieces, and I don't think OP was talking about epigenetics.
Re: The human genome is full of viruses
#28Monkey patching is not good engineering practice.
Re: The human genome is full of viruses
#29I've always thought of DNA as mere "data". "This goes here, that goes there", etc. And I've always wondered how such a relatively small amount of data could describe the massive complexity of a full-size organism. But this makes it sound like DNA is data the way Lisp is data: it can contain procedures and transformations and meta-statements about itself, and even mutate during the course of being interpreted. That wo…
also genes are influenced by a ton of context ecm, womb. if dna is code i'm still looking for eval semantics
Re: The human genome is full of viruses
#30I've always thought of DNA as mere "data". "This goes here, that goes there", etc. And I've always wondered how such a relatively small amount of data could describe the massive complexity of a full-size organism. But this makes it sound like DNA is data the way Lisp is data: it can contain procedures and transformations and meta-statements about itself, and even mutate during the course of being interpreted. That wo…
My read on the situation is that the analogy for computer viruses holds if, in the process of getting and removing the virus, it creates lots of little memory leaks.
They don’t kill you, rarely do they help you, the rest of the time they are just a very subtle drag on an important resource. At some point when we understand these systems much much better, we might go so far as to try to surgically remove them, but we can’t be absolutely sure there are no consequences.
Turns out the rebooting (ie children) fixes the problem sometimes, but nowhere near all the time.