Frankly, I find this a little disturbing: Eight percent of the human genome comes from the insertion of genetic material from a virus. A kind of RNA virus called a bornavirus has the ability to replicate in the nuclei of cells, causing its DNA to be incorporated into the DNA of the cells of the host organism, and thus passed along from generation to generation, eventually evolving into part of the “normal” genome. The researchers who have been studying this think that the resulting genetic mutations might be at the core of psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia and Republicanism.
are you saying that we’re mostly mutations? Maybe I ought to read that link you provided….
No, what the article says is that as much as 8% of the DNA in the human genome did not originate within humans, it was spliced into our DNA by viruses. The scientists think that this sometimes causes mutations that manifest themselves in a variety of disorders, schizophrenia in particular.
So…eventually we’ll be all mtuants? Is that where the X-men came from?
No, we’ll all be schizophrenic…but, on the plus side, no one will ever be lonely again.