Viral DNA in the human genome linked to major psychiatric disorders
medicalxpress.com
Viral DNA in the human genome linked to major psychiatric disorders
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Re: Viral DNA in the human genome linked to major psychiatric disorders
#2For convenience here’s the paper: Integrating human endogenous retroviruses into transcriptome-wide association studies highlights novel risk factors for major psychiatric conditions by Duarte, Pain, Bendall & others: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48153-z
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-48153-z
Open-access PDF.
(Kudos to the medicalxpress writer for actually linking to the paper.)
It seems to be quite readable. Just go fast enough to hydroplane on the surface, and jump as usual between the abstract, conclusion, abstract again, the middle part, the introduction and then put it away and sleep on it and come back to it and hydroplane and jump and… you know, all of that. Paper reading.
Before reading, in the headline I sort of saw the question whether embedded viral DNA might be getting “deployed into prod” and causing bad stuff to happen. The second ha-ha-contrarian-I-am-very-intelligent thought—also cheap to produce—was whether the ability to survive a viral onslaught brutal enough for the virus to embed itself in its quarry might be an indication that ancestral individuals had a more robust and aggressive immune system than peers who didn’t survive to reproduce. And if this could show up as a runaway inflammatory response in the current era. (From what I understand, psychiatric disorders are very very often accompanied by neuroinflammation. Practically… always?)
Such a great paper! I can speculate all this before I’ve even read the thing!!
Re: Viral DNA in the human genome linked to major psychiatric disorders
#3For convenience here’s the paper: Integrating human endogenous retroviruses into transcriptome-wide association studies highlights novel risk factors for major psychiatric conditions by Duarte, Pain, Bendall & others: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48153-z DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-48153-z Open-access PDF. (Kudos to the medicalxpress writer for actually linking to the paper.) It seems to be…
Very interesting. The paper suggests though that for many of these it's unlikely it's due to an immune response:
> It is not clear yet how the expression of the high confidence risk HERVs may play a role in psychiatric disorders. It was previously hypothesised that differential HERV expression in psychiatric cases was likely to be a by-product of immune responses against current or past infections34. Indeed, HERV expression is modulated by exposure to several pathogens35,36 and can activate inflammatory cascades37. This is an interesting theory that corroborates the fact that individuals with psychiatric disorders typically have higher incidences of infections38,39,40. However, our main analysis found that 1238 HERVs expressed in the brain are regulated in cis, some of which in association with risk for complex psychiatric traits. This indicates that there are HERV expression mechanisms directly contributing to disorder aetiology, that are not simply part of compensatory responses, or triggered by environmental factors.
Re: Viral DNA in the human genome linked to major psychiatric disorders
#4For convenience here’s the paper: Integrating human endogenous retroviruses into transcriptome-wide association studies highlights novel risk factors for major psychiatric conditions by Duarte, Pain, Bendall & others: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48153-z DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-48153-z Open-access PDF. (Kudos to the medicalxpress writer for actually linking to the paper.) It seems to be…
Do you blog? I'd love to read more, and I really enjoy your writing style.
Re: Viral DNA in the human genome linked to major psychiatric disorders
#5So uhm, can/should we start cutting these proviruses(?) out of our genomes? Unintended consequences?
Re: Viral DNA in the human genome linked to major psychiatric disorders
#6So uhm, can/should we start cutting these proviruses(?) out of our genomes? Unintended consequences?
Definitely not. Current estimates put viral DNA at about 8% of the human genome.
Re: Viral DNA in the human genome linked to major psychiatric disorders
#7For convenience here’s the paper: Integrating human endogenous retroviruses into transcriptome-wide association studies highlights novel risk factors for major psychiatric conditions by Duarte, Pain, Bendall & others: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48153-z DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-48153-z Open-access PDF. (Kudos to the medicalxpress writer for actually linking to the paper.) It seems to be…
Do you blog? I'd love to read more, and I really enjoy your writing style.
I found that way of writing terribly arrogant and annoying, like a smart 15-year-old.
Re: Viral DNA in the human genome linked to major psychiatric disorders
#8So uhm, can/should we start cutting these proviruses(?) out of our genomes? Unintended consequences?
Definitely not. Current estimates put viral DNA at about 8% of the human genome.
Would it be possible to consider them separately though? Like maybe it will turn out that say 10% of them are beneficial, 65% of them are neutral (either they do nothing at all or a mixture of benefit and harm), and 25% are slightly bad for us (can't be too harmful or we would have already known ig).
Re: Viral DNA in the human genome linked to major psychiatric disorders
#9So uhm, can/should we start cutting these proviruses(?) out of our genomes? Unintended consequences?
We can't (currently) cut them out because there's too many cells and they're brain cells. But if we could make complementary RNA, that could potentially neutralize them.
Re: Viral DNA in the human genome linked to major psychiatric disorders
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Definitely not. Current estimates put viral DNA at about 8% of the human genome.
Would it be possible to consider them separately though? Like maybe it will turn out that say 10% of them are beneficial, 65% of them are neutral (either they do nothing at all or a mixture of benefit and harm), and 25% are slightly bad for us (can't be too harmful or we would have already known ig).
Delivering gene therapies into brain cells is a non-trivial task. Also, there's alternatives to cutting the original sequence out; you can also dampen the transcribed RNA with downstream therapies.