11–20 of 50 posts
Does this happen with lots of viruses or just SARS-CoV-2? Seems like it’s pretty rare and would not be a whole copy of the virus or that many cells, surely it would just be a small percentage to the point where it doesn’t matter?
[1] https://twitter.com/ArisKatzourakis/status/13904196191696732...
Does this happen with lots of viruses or just SARS-CoV-2? Seems like it’s pretty rare and would not be a whole copy of the virus or that many cells, surely it would just be a small percentage to the point where it doesn’t matter?
It happens frequently with retroviruses. In fact 5-8% of the human genome is from (ancient) retrovirii. Coronavirus however is a completely different class of virus which makes it interesting, at least to me.
Does this happen with lots of viruses or just SARS-CoV-2? Seems like it’s pretty rare and would not be a whole copy of the virus or that many cells, surely it would just be a small percentage to the point where it doesn’t matter?
Yes, there are several types of viruses that purposely insert things into DNA. In fact, a significant part (more than half?) of our DNA comes from viruses (but is inactive). Coronaviruses are not known to do this, so I'd bet on a lab error for now. But it is conceivable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It happens frequently with retroviruses. In fact 5-8% of the human genome is from (ancient) retrovirii. Coronavirus however is a completely different class of virus which makes it interesting, at least to me.
Sorry for the nitpick but virii is neither in Latin nor English a plural of virus. The Latin would be vira the English viruses. There are a couple of common variants floating around that probably originate from misunderstanding Latin.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, there are several types of viruses that purposely insert things into DNA. In fact, a significant part (more than half?) of our DNA comes from viruses (but is inactive). Coronaviruses are not known to do this, so I'd bet on a lab error for now. But it is conceivable.
This isn't a case of the viruses themselves purposely inserting their code into our DNA, but rather enzymes that we produce ourselves doing it.
The paper[1] was contributed in PNAS, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. PNAS is a very well regarded, and high impact journal.
Members of National Academy of Science, usually proeminent professors, have the possibility to "contribute" their work. They can choose reviewers, and the paper will be accepted by the editors (an important step for such a journal). When you are in this position, finding reviewers that will not reject you is really easy: academia is a small world with a few really powerful individuals.
I think the reason for this is that NAS members performs a lot of editorial works for the Academy, and they are very good scientist hence their contribution should be valued, and fast.
This has been the source of a lot of outrage (I was maintaining a list but I can't find it). Some NAS members used this process to rapidly publish when timing was important (such as covid-19 research), scooping the work of researchers that don't have such a convenient outlet. It is especially problematic when a professor is a member of the NAS for his work in some field, but uses "contributed" papers to push mediocre or naive work in another field (s)he doesn't know at all (such as physicist in epidemiological modeling). A lot of very bad quality work ended up in the news because it was in PNAS.
To mitigate these issues, I think it's now limited to two papers per year. Moreover, the paper mentions "contributed by" and the name of the reviewers. But if you go and check some google scholar page, some people made a career out of it. For any idea, you get an audience and tons of credibility for free.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry for the nitpick but virii is neither in Latin nor English a plural of virus. The Latin would be vira the English viruses. There are a couple of common variants floating around that probably originate from misunderstanding Latin.
Faux Latin and "Latin" declension is annoying because it's often just plain wrong.
Tangentially related, a glimpse into academia. The paper[1] was contributed in PNAS, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. PNAS is a very well regarded, and high impact journal. Members of National Academy of Science, usually proeminent professors, have the possibility to "contribute" their work. They can choose reviewers, and the paper will be accepted by the editors (a…
I do thoroughly understand your concerns and distaste here that this allows prominent academics to push their (possibly incorrect) views/results on something far outside their expertise. I would love if PNAS publishes the peer reviews for papers such as these that pertain to ongoing health crises (eLife makes peer reviews public, but keeps the reviewers' identity anonymous).
Does this happen with lots of viruses or just SARS-CoV-2? Seems like it’s pretty rare and would not be a whole copy of the virus or that many cells, surely it would just be a small percentage to the point where it doesn’t matter?