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The human genome is full of viruses

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Re: The human genome is full of viruses

#101

Post by leaf_house »

sudoaza wrote: post #82
jhbadger wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is rather fancifully written (and by a non-scientist) but as a professional genomicist, I can assure you that the human genome is full of viruses, the remnants of which are almost entirely non-functional, but are interesting in the way meteor craters are to geology. Here is a review (nearly twenty years old from when the human genome was first sequenced) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC138943…

Huh, can we remove those? isn't there a cost to have all those extra sequences lying around?

There is a cost in terms of energy required to replicate the genome. The cost is relatively small though and grows slowly within the population so it is subject to fairly weak selection. On the other hand deleting DNA is always quite a risky proposition.

Re: The human genome is full of viruses

#102

Post by bionhoward »

refurb wrote: post #67
neuronic wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I suspect that CRISPR and other tools will be far harder to use than expected by many, especially laymen. Simply due to the combinatorics involved when exchanging sequences in DNA, for example introduced by resulting new epigenetic dynamics.

Agreed! Seems like most of the focus has been on correcting single nucleotide errors. That’s more straightforward than trying to insert a new gene.

you could add a new loop of DNA with a new gene, without an update to existing code. That might be easier than changing one letter

Append only immutable biotech

Re: The human genome is full of viruses

#103

Post by bionhoward »

3pt14159 wrote: post #6
_bxg1 wrote: post #3

I'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…

I had a thought the other day. It's theoretically possible for a computer virus to lead to a biological virus. Corrupting the data of a computer responsible for manufacturing a vaccine, for example.

Since protein folding is “solved,” you can make pathogen proteins with wildly different DNA to fool algorithms used to identify bioweapons. No bueno because baddies can order nasty germs printed cheap! There are no bug bounties for bio bugs

Re: The human genome is full of viruses

#104

Post by zby »

sudoaza wrote: post #82
jhbadger wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is rather fancifully written (and by a non-scientist) but as a professional genomicist, I can assure you that the human genome is full of viruses, the remnants of which are almost entirely non-functional, but are interesting in the way meteor craters are to geology. Here is a review (nearly twenty years old from when the human genome was first sequenced) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC138943…

Huh, can we remove those? isn't there a cost to have all those extra sequences lying around?

https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/mammals-made-b...

Re: The human genome is full of viruses

#105

Post by 101404 »

jhbadger wrote: post #74
crazygringo wrote: post #44

> Even after recovering from an infection there will always be a piece of that virus encoded within your DNA. I did a little research and this appears to be almost completely false . This sentence makes it sound like every time you get a cold, your body's DNA is permanently altered. Which would be insane if true. The reality is that this insane outcome is incredibly rare, but nevertheless has happened enough times ov…

The article is rather fancifully written (and by a non-scientist) but as a professional genomicist, I can assure you that the human genome is full of viruses, the remnants of which are almost entirely non-functional, but are interesting in the way meteor craters are to geology. Here is a review (nearly twenty years old from when the human genome was first sequenced) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC138943…

You said something completely unrelated to the parent's comment.

Re: The human genome is full of viruses

#107

Post by ivanhoe »

crazygringo wrote: post #44

> Even after recovering from an infection there will always be a piece of that virus encoded within your DNA. I did a little research and this appears to be almost completely false . This sentence makes it sound like every time you get a cold, your body's DNA is permanently altered. Which would be insane if true. The reality is that this insane outcome is incredibly rare, but nevertheless has happened enough times ov…

Retroviruses spread by altering host cells' DNA, so I doubt it is really such an "incredibly rare" event for those infected by them, like e.g. HIV positive people.

Re: The human genome is full of viruses

#108

Post by labawi »

markdown wrote: post #92
pergadad wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

> 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) While I've heard this before, I never gave it much thought until just now. Is it fair to say that a child gets no DNA from her mother? Or in other words, each child is a mix of the DNA of their father and that of their maternal grandparents?

The half-DNA of eggs is selected as they divide from ancestor cells.

Eggs of a woman (baby/fetus) develop while in mother's womb, but they are more immediately inside the fetus, are formed from the cells of the fetus and are descendants of the same single cell zygote as (most) of the cells that form the woman's body.

Re: The human genome is full of viruses

#110

Post by labawi »

pergadad wrote: post #25
_bxg1 wrote: post #3

I'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 an…

> epigenetic markers .. You influence .. and pass on to .. grandchildren (as women..)

AFAICT, a woman significantly influences markers on the eggs (future grandchild) developing in her child (fetus/embrio) in her womb, but at the same time, she influences all the other cells (child). Some (even critical) processes are probably more influenced by the grandmother, but I wouldn't minimize the mother's effect.

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