There are fossilized viruses in human DNA

Image by AJC1 via Flickr

The Science Times reports that the Borna Virus, a virus which can “drive horses into wild fits,” causing them to “kill themselves by smashing in their skulls” or to “starve themselves to death,” lurks buried within the human genome. Carl Zimmer writes:

The virus now turns out to have an intimate bond with every person on
Earth. In the latest issue of Nature, a team of Japanese and American
scientists report
that the human genome contains borna virus genes. The virus infected
our monkey-like ancestors 40 million years ago, and its genes have been
passed down ever since.

But that’s not all. It turns out that

Borna viruses are not the only viruses lurking in our genome.
Scientists have found about 100,000 elements of human DNA that probably
came from viruses. But the borna virus belongs to a kind of virus that
has never been found in the human genome before. Its discovery raises
the possibility that many more viruses are left to be found.

Apparently, as much as 8.3 percent of the human genome can be “traced back to retrovirus infections.” You can read the whole article, my part-virus friends, here.