A couple weeks ago I wrote about the 98,000 viruses that have
permanently pasted their genes into our genome over the past 60
million years. What makes these viruses doubly fascinating is
that scientists are making new discoveries about them all the
time. Over at the open-access journal PLOS Pathogens, two new
papers add some pieces to the puzzle of how these viruses get
into our genomes, and how they affect our health along the way.
The first paper offers a striking portrait of a virus hopping
species. Researchers at the Cleveland Clinic stumbled across the
virus as they were studying prostate cancer that runs in
families. It turns out that some forms of prostate cancer are
associated with mutations in a gene called RNASEL. Some studies
indicate that one mutation in particular is behind 13% of all
prostate cancer cases. If one copy of the gene is mutated, a
man’s chances of getting prostate cancer go up fifty percent. If
both copies are mutated, his chances double. And yet–as is often
the case–other studies