A while back I blogged about the tens of thousands of viruses we carry in our genomes. In today's New York Times I write about how scientists reconstructed a working ancestral virus from its disabled descendants: Old Viruses Resurrected Through DNA.
Here's the original paper.
More like this
Viruses are everywhere.
Theyre even in other viruses.
:-|
Its like, instead of 'Put a bird on it!', scientists are like 'Put a virus on it!'
SWEEEEET!
Scientists found a brand new branch of organisms in the boiling acid pools or Yellowstone National Park!
A couple weeks ago I wrote about the 98,000 viruses that have permanently pasted their genes into our genome over the past 60 mil
Check out Mother's Littlest Helper by Jessica Ruvinsky on p16 of the Dec. 2006 Discover. According to the story an endogenous retrovirus is responsible for a protein that regulates mammalian placentas during pregnancy. When a gene in the endogenous retrovirus enJSRV was blocked in sheep pregnancies tended to end in miscarriage. enJSRV is similar to the primate endogeous retrovirus HERV-W.