Unexpected viral 'fossils' found in vertebrate genomes
Thursday, July 29, 2010 - 16:21
in Biology & Nature
Over millions of years, retroviruses, which insert their genetic material into the host genome as part of their replication, have left behind bits of their genetic material in vertebrate genomes. In a recent study, published July 29 in the open-access journal PLoS Pathogens, a team of researchers have now found that human and other vertebrate genomes also contain many ancient sequences from Ebola/Marburgviruses and Bornaviruses - two deadly virus families.