Thanks for spreading “the VIGE–>RNA-virus meme” on twitter.

Question to you: where do viruses have their origin. I mean, before they start to evolve (change) they must have their origin somewhere, isn’t it?

Some believe they come from space. The better solution is: they come from the genome. They have their origin in transposable elements knowns as ERVs. Look into the genetics of HIV, influenza and other RNA viruses. You will observe that they have the usual core genes (gag and pol) like the harmless VIGE-family known as ERVs.

In addition, the RNA viruses have acquired genes from the genome in which they reside. HIV has acquired a piece of the CCR5 ligand (to be exact: a piece of the interleukin-8 gene) to enter immune cells. Influenza acquired the neuramidase gene, which is an essential gene found in the genome of mammals and functions to modificy proteins.

In my opinion, evolutionists have turned the world upside down. They believe that viruses made mammals, but the opposite is true. Viruses destroy mammals. The origin of RNA viruses can be found in harmless TEs (type: ERV), which are particularly good at putting genes in new regulatory contexts (to generate novel variation in offspring). Hence, RNA viruses are derailed VIGEs.

PB

PB

These guys are NOT looking at viruses or remnants there of. They are studying transposable elements. Commonly thought of as remnants of ancient virus integrations, these genetic elements turn out to be part of the regulatory genome. Transposable genetic switches, they regulate the transcriptome and are the basis to understand the origin of variation (i.e. differential gene expression). The idea that these elements are remnants of RNA viruses is non-sensical. It is the other way around: RNA viruses have their origin in the genome, to be precise in a particular type of Transposable Element known as ERV. At last, we know where viruses originate: In the genome from TEs!

For more information on the novel hypothesis that TE’s are in fact variation-inducing genetic elements (VIGEs) and the predecessors of RNA viruses have a look here (scroll down all the way down and open my papers: http://www.evoinfo.org/resources/

pb

[CZ: To everybody, um, yes, these guys are looking at viruses. Endogenous retroviruses are clearly viruses. When they are only recently integrated into host genomes, they can still produce infective viral particles. And scientists have been able to reconstruct infective viral particles from mutated virus sequences, resurrecting viruses after millions of years. These viruses belong to the same group of viruses as HIV and retroviruses that cause various cancers. There are a huge number of papers on this subject--go to PubMed and type in "human endogenous retroviruses" and start reading.

This commenter tells us that all this research is "non-sensical," and claims that these genetic sequences in genomes are the origin of viruses, rather than the other way around. He points us to a series of papers published in something called the Journal of Creation. (See for yourself.) As far as I can tell, those papers do not address the huge amount of research in recent years in which scientists have reconstructed the evolutionary history of viruses as they enter host genomes and then mutate in the descendants of their hosts. Here's a Loom post on one such study.]

[CZ: Not all placental mammals have a syncytiotrophoblast layer in their placenta. That feature appears to have evolved several times--with the help of several viruses. Once it did, it became essential to those lineages' development. Hence the lethal effects of knocking out the virus gene in mice.]

#18:

What will emerge as the new metaphor if we no longer have a tree of relatedness, but rather, something more intertwined?

Those who argue that want to say bush.

But the fact is that if it happened on a genome level, we couldn’t resolve trees as robustly as we do. Even if biologists at times have to use models that acknowledge the sometime lateral transfer of pieces of genomes, such as matrix methods.

Also fascinating how many crackpots crawled out of them cracks:

#20:

If you believe there is no randomness, I have this card game I can interest you in.

In other words, you propose the utterly impossible.

#23:

The “original host” wasn’t a host, it didn’t use the viral gene because it wasn’t around, yet the host-to-be was viable then. That is why it is called evolution.

#25:

Too much gods, sex and viruses in your questions to make sense.

#28, # 34:

[enough said]

#30:

Are you kidding? One good outcome can never explain away the religious problem of the existence of utter misery. Your gods have to take responsibility for what you claim they do, as adults do.

Wikipedia: Clinical significance

HERV-W has been associated with multiple sclerosis and schizophrenia in humans. (HERV-W_7q21.2 provirus ancestral Env polyprotein also known as Env-W or enverin or syncytin is a protein that in humans is encoded by the ERVWE1 gene.

Then, my job just now is searching information everywhere about these diseases and trying to understand it from the Matrix/DNA formula viewpoint.

The existence of virus, the origins of placenta and mammalian reproductive apparatus are explained by the Matrix formula that was present in the state of the world before biogenesis. Hence, this information here about syncytin, the fuses, already was predicted by this theory 30 years ago, as proved by copyrights.

What’s virus? There is a universal natural formula for all natural systems and viruses are the performer of systemic function number 5 at cells systems (See the formula at my article “Nós, Mamíferos Fomos Feitos Tambem Por Virus! Mamma mia! (Portuguese – fevereiro | 17 | 2012). Google it.

How was the origin of placenta and mammalian reproductive apparatus? It is explained in my article “From Reptile to Mammals: A Heroic Act? (English – November 13th, 2011)”

There is a controversial point between the two theories. Matrix suggests that the original genes that later produced syncytin already were registered in the primordial DNA and they are there, at the junk DNA. But they were prohibited to express because the evolution of biological systems obeys the same chronology ordered by the formula and the formula first makes system laying eggs out, only in a later phase the system keeps the egg within. So, in parallel was evolving the virus which DNA had several mutations at the point that some genes are not re-cognoscible when faced with its similar genes at the living beings’ junk DNA.

There is this possibility: the living beings genes produced the viral genes which had mutations and went back to living beings DNA when evolution determined that it was time for their expression.
Viruses, as performers of F5, are supposed to be cells organelles. This function build tools for reproduction and perpetuation of species, then it appears only at intervals in the cell system. Viruses are the performers of male functions, the cells tool as their spermatozoon. The cause evolution had keep this viral organelle outside the cell system is because they have the bias to reproduce by re-cycling closed systems. Then, the virus keeps orbiting around the female apparatus (in this case, the uterus) and mixing at ingredients and cells in that region they produces syncytin.

Everything equal when the Matrix formula was building the galaxies building blocks: uterus is the black hole at the galaxy nucleus, placenta is the formation of events’ horizon with stellar dust. Fetuses are seeds of a new star and virus are the comets that make the fecundation, fusing the black hole with the external Universe, which, in this biological case, is the mother’s body.
This is a different theory, maybe has a lot of wrong things in their models, but his ability to make predictions has been incomparable with others theories.

“They typically have gotten there by infecting eggs or sperm, inserting their own DNA into ours.”

My understanding of how germline viruses work (and there are some documented cases out infecting people as we speak, e.g., in Latin America), is rather more involved than your explanation, at least in males. While eggs are created early and then doled out in women, reducing their mutagenic succeptibility, sperm are routinely created and replaced and a germline virus doesn’t have to hit a man close to the time of infection to be effective.

My understanding is that a germline virus will generally change the genome of the infected person throughout their body in many or all of their cells, and that this in turn gets reflected in sperm production, rather than infecting sperm cells directly.

I’m not a virologist or a geneticist and I am willing to stand corrected. I also recognize that the post tries to sum up a complex biological process in a single sentence and employs weasel words to make clear that the mechanism that it describes isn’t a universal rule. But, if the process really is more complicated, it probably deserves a footnote at least disclaiming the idea that it is really that simple.

http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2012/02/human-microbiome-congress.html