Ancient Trade-Off May Explain Why Humans Get HIV
New Scientist | 6-21-2007 | Roxanne Khamsi
Posted on 06/22/2007 8:32:35 PM EDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1854877/posts
Spread Of Endogenous Retrovirus K Is Similar In The DNA Of Humans And Rhesus MonkeysAccording to paleontologic and molecular studies, the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) is the closer relative to the humans (Homo sapiens) and that both lineages had a common ancestor at 5 to 7 million years ago.
adapted from Public Library Of Science materials
ScienceDaily
Friday, October 12, 2007
Moreover, the human-chimp lineage split from that of the rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta) around 25 million years ago. However, by studying the population dynamics of complete copies of primate endogenous retrovirus family K (ERV-K) in the genomes of humans, chimpanzee and rhesus monkey, a surprising pattern was observed.
The study by Romano and colleagues being published this week on PLoS One revealed that human ERV-K had a similar demographic signature to that of the rhesus monkey, both differing greatly from that of the chimpanzee. The data suggested that the humans and rhesus have been purging ERV-K copies from their genomes while the chimpanzee ERV-K population kept the signature of increasing numbers of ERV-K amplification in the genome of ancestral primates during the last 20 million years.