8% of the genetic material human drift of a virus

Around of one 8% of the human genetic material it happens of a virus and not of our ancestral ones, in accordance with Japaneseand American researchers. The study, and an attached article for the professor of biology of the University of the Texas in Arlington, Cédric Feschotte, had been published recently in the reviewed celebrity Nature.

The inquiry demonstrated that the genomes of the human beings and other mammals contain DNA derived from the insertion of bornavírus (bornaviridae), a virus whose responses and transcriptions happen in the ARN of the cellular nucleus. Feschotte, that worked jointly in a recent research directed by professor Keizo Tomonaga in the University of Osaka in Japan, said that this transmitted DNA viralmente can be a psychiatric cause of genetic mutations and upheavals as the schizophrenia and upheavals of the psychic state. In its article, Feschotte speculates on the paper of such insertions capsizes in the genetic mutations that could have evolutivas and medical consequências.

The assimilation of the sequências you capsize in the genome of the guest is a known process as endogenização. This occurs when the viral DNA if integrates in one cromossoma of the reproductive cells and later it passes of parents the children. So far, retrovírus was the only virus known in generating these endogenous copies in the vertebrates. But Feschotte said that the scientists had discovered that a called virus bornavírus comes repetidamente being endogenizado in the mammals through the evolution.

Bornavírus (BDV) must its name to the city of Borna, Germany, where a viral epidemic in 1885 finished with the cavalry of the city. The BDV can infectar a great variety of birds and mammals, including human beings. He is only, since it only attacks the neurons, establishing a persistent infection in the brain of its host, and its cycle of life has place in the nucleus of the infectadas cells. Feschotte said that this close association of the BDV with the nucleus of the cell lead the scientists to search if bornavírus can have previously left registers of infections in the human beings and other mammals in form of endogenous elements.

The researchers had studied the 234 genomes eucariotas known (the genomes that total had been sequenciados) to see if they found similar sequências to the ones of the BDV.

- “The researchers had exhumed a great amount of similar endogenous elements to the ones of the BVD in many and diverse mammals”, said Feschotte. The scientists had also been capable to recoup spontaneous insertions of BDV in cromossomas of cells human beings cultivated with persistent infection for BDV. Based in these data, Feschotte considers that the BDV insertions could be a source of mutations in the cells of the brain in the infectadas people.

- “These data had allowed the formularization of a comprovável hypothesis, despite controversa: the causal association of the infection for BDV with the schizophrenia and upheavals of the spirit state”, said Feschotte. High level of research in laboratory of Feschotte, that to a large extent if centers in the study of transposition elements - those genetic elements that are capable of if moving and if inside talking back of the genomes of practically all the living organisms, is representative of the level of research in general taken the handle in the University of the Texas in the city of Arlington, and is in saw of to be recognized the national level, as one of the more important institutions of research of U.S.A.