8 Percent of Human Genome Was Inserted By Virus, and May Cause Schizophrenia
The rise of psychopharmacology has led doctors to not only treat mental illnesses like regular diseases, but think of them as such as well. Turns out, schizophrenia may be more than just a disease in concept, but actually a virus itself. According to new research, as much as eight percent of the human genome consists of viruses that inserted themselves into our DNA for replication, including the gene that causes schizophrenia. Writing in this week's issue of the journal Nature, Cédric Feschotte, a professor of biology at the University of Texas, Arlington, found previously undiscovered traces of animal virus DNA in the genes associated with schizophrenia and other mood disorders. By spreading his search to a class of viruses ignored by other researchers due to its inability to infect primates, Feschotte found far more viral DNA in our genome than previous studies. The virus type, called bornaviruses, typically infects hoofed...