I know, I know..I've been away for the last week recovering from surgery but glad to report that I'm on the mend.
In my down time (only when the vale of pain meds had lifted), I read some really great articles on viral DNA in the human genome and what is actually does and how through Bioinformatics, viruses are being tracked . I'll report on some of that later this week but today (better late then never) I wanted to give you a little bit of insight on viruses.
Viruses are actually the smallest living thing known to man. We all know of and we have all has small and quite simple viruses like the cold or a flu, but viruses cause a wide range of disease, a lot of them being deadly.
When we think about it, viruses have been around for a long time, maybe even as long as the first humans inhabited the earth. One can say that we, humans are all actually part virus. The human genome contains more DNA from viruses then the DNA that makes up our own genes. Scientists have identified thousands of segments of retroviruses (A retrovirus is a virus whose genes are encoded in RNA instead of DNA) DNA in our genes, which make up about 8% of the human genome.
Human genome DNA and viral DNA contain segments. According to an article written by Carl Zimmer, three of these segments that are shares are gag - which is where virus genes or genetic make up are stored, env - the knobs that appear on the surface of the virus that allows the virus to attach itself to the non infected cell in order to invade said cell and pol which creates the enzyme that inserts the virus genes into the host cell DNA. Together, these segments invade viable cells where they are replicated and multiply at alarming rates causing rapid decline in a number of hosts, such as cancer and aids patients.
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| www.dna.org |
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