Sooooo, heres something to think about. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was the first to start considering what he called the little animals, microscopic lifeforms. Nowadays, we know they are everywhere, and an integral part of their environment. But, consider the following: https://youtube/watch?v=RVvNTCJE5oI Our genomes are mostly viral. This was and continues to be one of the big surprises from the completion of the human genome project. We are not quite sure what it means. We just know that it is the case. We have three billion bases of DNA sequences (actually six billion if you consider that we have double copies of all of it). Less than 10 percent of six billion comprise genes (of which we have twenty-five thousand) that we consider to be “human genes,” although most are very similar or identical to those of other animals. A certain unknown amount of the human genome is about gene regulation. However, most of the human genome, five-sixths of the six billion bases, has been identified as viral or viral-like, or perhaps derived from viruses. This includes actual identifiable viruses and pieces of viruses as well as a category of DNA called “trans-posons” or “jumping genes,” many of which seem to be of viral origin. Viruses and transposons have (if they are fully functional) independent activities, sometimes involving replicating on their own or even jumping around from one section of the genome to another by recombinations. However, many or most seem to be not particularly active and simply wait passively for the entire genome to be replicated, which of course includes themselves. However, there is much we do not understand about these viral entities. Consider this a frontier of genetics... -Betsy Dexter Dyer, Basics of Genetics guidebook, p. 86, 87 https://youtube/watch?v=EEZSuwkx7Ik What do you think of this? Does this have philosophical relevance? Why? Why not?
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 23:30:46 +0000
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