8 percent of human genetic material comes from a virus

The original article is here: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7277/full/463039a... (paywall). But this is basically a review. The actual research in this week's Nature is not by this UT Arlington lab, but instead by Horie, et al, from Tokyo ( http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7277/full/nature0... )

That 8% of human DNA comes from viruses is interesting, but not new; this has been known for at least a few years now. What is interesting about the new findings is that this is the first non-retrovirus found to insert DNA into the human genome.

I read a Readers Digest article along these lines a while back and found it increadibly fascinating.

From what I remember, our DNA is riddled with bits of ancient virus DNA. Explanations as to why these have lasted so long were uncertain, but researchers have made some pretty impressive speculations.

For example, viruses, in order to survive as a species, must not only feed of their host (the human), but must ensure that the human survives in order for it to keep living. Furthermore, viruses compete with other viruses for food (the human), and so if another virus ourbreak occurs then the resident virus will, if you like, work with the human immune defence system to kill off the new intruding virus. So they may have even been crucial to human survival at some point.

There were further discussions about how these ancient viruses may have affected human development (ie - the larger, tumour like brain, etc), but I can't remember much of it.

I guess the only concrete point I can contribute here is that this is definately nothing new.

Macros in DNA?