In
a recent study, researchers led by Edward Chung, a computational biologist at
the University of Utah explored whether ERVs (Endogenous Retroviruses) help us
fend off invaders. ERVs are “endogenous” meaning they are sometimes passed down
from generation to generation and “retrovirus” which are types of viruses that
infect a cell and convert its RNA to DNA and then become part of a human chromosome.
Interestingly enough, ERVs are unable to produce new viruses, which led
scientists to believe they were harmless genetic fossils with no apparent
function. As a matter of fact, 100,000 pieces of ancient viral DNA live among
our genes making us 8% virus. This new study brings up a reason to believe this
foreign material may boost our immune system, even protecting us from other
viruses. The researchers focused on the innate immune system, which is
preprogrammed to launch immediate attacks against entire classes of foreigners
instead of the adaptive immune system, which learns to recognize specific
invaders and prepare an attack strategy. First off, they scanned 3 different
human cell lines for ERVs in their DNA that could bind with the innate immunity
transcription factors and found thousands. These were especially important
because they turn on genes that launch attacks against pathogens. With this in
mind, researchers predicted that if they removed viral DNA from the cell,
transcription factors would not function properly, potentially disrupting
previously mentioned genes. Using a special gene-editing tool called, “CRISPR”,
they snipped out several endogenous viruses from the cell’s DNA. The last step
was to infect ERV depleted cells with a virus. In this case they chose the
vaccinia virus, which has possible ties to the smallpox. As a result, these
cells had a much weaker innate immune system response than unedited normal
cells. The reason for this was because an important immune protein wasn’t
produced thus not fighting the virus. Later on, scientists added the genes back
into the cells and immune function was restored. Harmit Malik, an evolutionary
biologist suggests these viral fossils probably played a key role in the
evolution of our species.
This
article was interesting because it gives great detail about our ancestral genes
and how our body has evolved over time. The fact scientists can do these kinds
of experiments to prove what these viral fossils play a role in is fascinating
and hopefully they continue to build off this.
This is a very interesting article. I would like to see more research on it.
ReplyDeleteThis can be the genetic link to further prove the theory of evolution, that our immune system derived from a virus is a crazy thought! Makes great sense though at the same time. Also the experiment they did to find this data is similar to what we did in lab last week. Pretty cool.
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