I'm a graduate student studying the molecular and biochemical evolution of HIV within patients and within populations. I also study epigenetic control of ERVs.
This is a repost from the old ERV. A retrotransposed ERV :P I dont trust them staying up at Blogger, and the SEED overlords are letting me have 4 reposts a week, so Im gonna take advantage of that!
I am going to try to add more comments to these posts for the old readers-- Think of these as 'directors cut' posts ;)
Departmental retreat today! Enjoy some PERVS in the mean time (open access journal, w00t!)
PERVs: Porcine Endogenous Retroviruses. hehehehe
This months Journal of Virology has a cool article on pigs version of HERVs:
Im sure its not news to you, but theres an organ shortage in the US. And since George W wont let us clone humans just to harvest their organs (lol!), we have to look other places. Technically our closest primate relatives would be a good choice, but people (including me) think its weird to harvest their organs too. Turns out pigs arent a bad choice! Unless youre Jewish or Muslim... Anyway, even after creating transgenic organs in pigs (pig organ that expresses human proteins, so its less likely to be rejected), there are still more obstacles to cross before they can be a viable solution. One obstacle? PERVs.
PERVs (and ERVs in general in other organisms) are more active than our HERVs. You cant just put a pig liver in someone who is immunocompromised and not expect the 50 identified PERVs to start infecting other cells. Now pig PERvs dont hurt pigs, and human HERVs dont hurt humans... but what if you put a PERV in a human? Its not an ERV anymore-- its a retrovirus. Where is it going to land in the human genome?
These researchers found that when you put PERVS in human cells, they like to insert themselves near transcriptional start sites (right in front of a gene). Just like murine leukemia viruses. Like the MLV that was used in the disastrous gene therapy trials that gave some kids leukemia. Ugh. Crap.
As always, we have 'further avenues of research.'
Life Science
Comments
My wife tells me I'm a perv, but I don't think this is what she had in mind.
Although I have had a lung transplant...
Posted by: Chris | May 15, 2008 4:59 PM
I asked a Jew who wanted to become more devout what their stance was on drugs, for instance, derived from pigs, and she said that the preservation of life and health was most important: if the best medical alternative was to get a drug derived from pigs, doing so would be one's moral duty. I guess that would extend to pig organs, at least if you couldn't wait for a human one to become available.
Also, I totally want to hear more about PERVs.
Posted by: synapse | May 16, 2008 6:19 PM