Studying viruses can be important because they are often disease causing pathoge
ID: 165679 • Letter: S
Question
Studying viruses can be important because they are often disease causing pathogens. However, because of how easy they are to control and manipulate in the laboratory, viruses can be good tools to study basic, fundamental principles of cell and molecular biology. Explain one example of how viruses were used to make a critical molecular biology/ genetics discovery Make sure to address 1) how was the experiment done, 2) what was concluded by the scientists, 3) what were the broad implications of the study?)
Explanation / Answer
Endogenous retroviruses (ERV)
ERVs are in a position to reinsert another copy of their own DNA into the human genome once they're activated. Simply because they mainly multiply their own DNA, they're sometimes referred to as selfish DNA. Due to their selfishness, ERVs are probably dangerous once they destroy genes that are important to human life. In Cell Stem Cell, researchers identify that many ERVs are activated in cells from early embryos, but instead of being harmful, they could have grown to be of use on the length of evolution.
Genes that are activated are transcribed into RNA to function. Thus, researchers investigate the RNAs in the cell to identify productive genes. Several ERV aspects are merely pieces of the entire viruses. They keep the initial collection, but the RNA that they make can be quite distinctive from the RNA that retroviruses make. In many cases, these ERV-RNAs are even parts of RNAs developed from other genes. In this manner, ERVs might have developed to get a brand new function; they could have grown to be the main blueprint for human life. ERVs have been shown to play a role in disorders such as for example cancer. Since many ERVs are perhaps not indicated in the most widely used cell models, and they don't occur in mouse, researchers do not even fully realize their function. These are amazing findings since the embryonic cells that express these ERV-derived RNAs are basic to the human life cycle.