3 ms·

Here's the sequence of the viral-like sequence they're calling Steamer: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/KF319019 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/KF31

Here's the sequence of the viral-like sequence they're calling Steamer: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/KF319019 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/KF319019 We've got a bunch of similar viral-like DNA within our own genomes. And it appears some of those sequences might actually 'fight' each other over evolutionary time scales (dominant negative variants expressed from common viral-promoters) - to the point where their infighting actually is in some sense part of our own immune system's ability to ward off incoming viral sequences in favor of existing sequences we're playing host to. Lots more biology for us to learn!

stevenwoo 9y ago
As someone who likes to read about biology but only took a couple of classes in high school - isn't there a trope that we used to not understand what 90% of our DNA does and initially thought it was not used? The very simpler counterargument in my opinion was we don't understand 90% of what our DNA does.
- jfarlow 9y ago
  There is such a trope - I wouldn't call it accurate. We're learning a lot very fast. But DNA (like most biology) is multi-modal and has roles at many different scales - from the scale of milliseconds to cellular lifetimes, to organismal lifetimes to species' lifetimes, from coding proteins, to regulating what codes proteins, to physical space, to more. There's a lot to learn, but we also know a lot. To me it seems more like a nice middle ground right now - enough to get a truly solid toehold, but also much more to go :)