ERVs
sa smith | March 9, 2009Though the Google Machine has pissed me off in the past, I still loves it. One thing I really like about teh Google is Google News, where I can pop in words Im interested in, and read the latest news on that keyword every day.
No big surprise one of my keywords is 'endogenous retrovirus'.
Well today, under the 'ERV' tab, I noticed an article by Adnanabannabiingbong Yahya, or someone writing under his name:
QUESTION: How do you account for Endogenous Retro Viruses (ERVs), and the markers they have left in inheritable genes? You can clearly "trace" ancestry using these ERV markers. How do you…
sa smith | December 17, 2008Ive been *patiently* waiting two damn weeks for this paper to come out:
A transitional endogenous lentivirus from the genome of a basal primate and implications for lentivirus evolution.
Gifford and Katzourakis are the same folks who found RELIK a while back-- a lentiviral ERV in a species of European rabbit.
This time, after screening the available sequences of 21 primates (including humans and chimpanzees) they found two in the genome of gray mouse lemurs (Zaboomafoos cousin :P). The gray mouse lemurs genome isnt totally sequenced yet, so they think there might be up to six lentiviral ERVs…
sa smith | December 8, 2008Blaggers. YouTubers. WikkiWarriors.
We are all brothers in arms in this information revolution.
Jeremy Mohn from stand up for REAL science has been creating a series of YouTube videos on evolution.
His newest installment?
ERVs.
Sweet.
sa smith | October 29, 2008Back in 2006, I wrote a short note on the use of pigs for organ transplants.
Why the hell was I interested in pig organs? Well, pigs can be genetically engineered to be almost perfect organ donors for humans that need transplants. Perfect... except for the fact pigs have PERVs like humans have HERVs.
So sure you could put a pig aortic valves into humans... but would those transplanted organs start producing pig-specific retroviruses? Would they evolve into the next HIV-1/AIDS pandemic? Would they stay silent and everything would be fine? Hell, we dont know what the human ERVs do in…
sa smith | October 22, 2008Whoa!
I dont know how much stock to put into this particular paper, but some (potentially) incredible data just came out in Journal of Virology:
Human endogenous retrovirus K (HML-2) elements in the plasma of people with lymphoma and breast cancer
HERV-K (human endogenous retroviral family K) are the babies of human ERVs-- they are the youngest addition to our genome (they became endogenous 200,000-5 million years ago), and related to a mouse retrovirus, MMTV.
These scientists did something kind of odd. They looked at patients that were healthy, had Rheumatoid Arthritis, HIV-associated…
sa smith | October 21, 2008WARNING: This post is just a rant against a review article Im too impatient to deal with today. Its really just a rant. heh.
Hey, you know whats even better than having 'science reporters' use the term 'junk DNA' in their pop-science articles?
A 'real' scientist using the term 'junk DNA' in their review on LINES/SINES/ERVs.
Retrotransposons Revisited: The Restraint and Rehabilitation of Parasites
Following the discovery of transposons in plants and bacteria, the presence of mobile DNA in eukaryotic species gained widespread acceptance. However, the concept of "controlling elements" gave…
sa smith | August 25, 2008Over a year ago, I made a short series of posts addressing Creationists and endogenous retroviruses (Old ERV, New ERV).
Casey Luskin is evidently unaware of this series, as he managed to smack his loverly, loverly face into a couple of them in his recent blog post 'news release' at Evolution News & Views (Why is EN&V indexed by Google News, again?).
Casey TARD: ID proponents would predict function for ERVs... As William Dembski wrote in 1998, "If, on the other hand, organisms are designed, we expect DNA, as much as possible, to exhibit function."
Casey is referring to a recently…
sa smith | July 17, 2008This next installment of 'Intro to ERVs' is about the coolest protein on the planet*, Env.
Weve got all the enzymes protected in their nice little core-- but retroviruses are enveloped viruses. Theyre coated in the membranes of the cells they budded off of. Thats where env comes in! env codes for the protein that sticks out of the lipid membrane. It is responsible for binding to new host cells and mediating fusion between the viral membrane, and the target cell membrane.
To use HIV-1 as an example, the envelope gene codes for a 'precursor protein', glycoprotein160 (gp160). Its called a '…
sa smith | June 19, 2008In the last segment of 'Intro to ERVs', I explained part of my blags tagline by talking about gag, the gene that codes for all the retroviral structural proteins. This post is going to be about the gene(s) that code for all of the enzymes a retrovirus needs: pol.
But remember how I said retroviruses only have one promoter for alllll their genes? Sometimes retroviruses dont just have a pol gene, but gag-pro-pol, or gag-pro + pol, or something silly-- lets just keep things simple and call it 'pol' :)
Pol codes for all the enzymes a retrovirus needs:
Protease-- Chomps big proteins into all…
sa smith | May 27, 2008When I first joined SciBlogs, there were several new readers who didnt get 'the joke':
If were made in Gods image, Gods made of gag, pol, and env.
Short explanation: Genomes are full of crap. Crap DNA. No, no not super special DNA front loaded by The Lord to be [insert stupid creationist claim here], I mean crap. Clearly retroviral DNA in humans, just chillin. Old, decrepit gag, pol, and env genes (and promoters/insertional markers, but that makes the joke less catchy :P) which are the basic building blocks of retroviruses.
Thus, if humans are made in the image of a god, that god looks…
sa smith | May 15, 2008
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:
Porcine endogenous retrovirus integration sites in the…
sa smith | May 14, 2008I wasnt going to talk about this until later, but a commenter/troll left a comment on my last post:
Umm, Do retroviruses have any clinical relevance whatsoever?
Top ten killers in USA per CDC:
Heart disease: 652,091
Cancer: 559,312
Stroke: 143,579
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 130,933
Accidents: 117,809
Diabetes: 75,119
Alzheimer's disease: 71,599
Influenza/Pneumonia: 63,001
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 43,901
Septicemia: 34,136
Do you see any retroviruses on this list? Do you now understand why you toil away at 10 bucks/hour? Your work has not an iota of relevance to…
sa smith | May 12, 2008Before I start talking about endogenous retroviruses, there is one thing I need to make clear about exogenous retroviruses first, for anyone who deals with pseudoscientists.
When dealing with Creationists/Deniers on the topic of virology, almost immediately you will be confronted with a form of 'viruses are magic'. For instance, Professional HIV Denier Rebecca 'Blondie' Culshaw is just certain that HIV-1 is really a harmless ERV (see points 1-17), and Creationists routinely pull 'scientific facts' about ERVs out of thin air.
So I really cant stress this one point enough:
Okay, you all know…
sa smith | May 10, 2008
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 ;)
WHOO! Classes over! Scary 'wait for grades' time begins... But Im finally going to get to jump into an ERV series Ive been wanting to do for a while! It will hopefully turn into a great resource for all you science defenders when you encounter a Creationist online/real life…
sa smith | May 3, 2008This 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 ;)
Several new readers have asked for more information on ERVs, and what exactly my blog subtitle 'joke' means. After finals next week I plan on writing more detailed posts, but until then, there are a few in the archives to tide you over :)
'Mobile Elements' was my third post…