New scientist Ancient viruses buried in our DNA may reawaken and cause illness

I will try to put some extracts


The advent of genome sequencing in the 1990s revealed just how common these viruses are. Ever since they first evolved about 500 million years ago, countless retroviruses have buried themselves in the DNA of their hosts, to the extent that this ancient viral material now occupies about 8 per cent of the human genome. “You have to consider these viruses as a very, very old thing that happened to our ancestors millions of years ago,” says Patrick Küry, a neuroscientist at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf in Germany.

Over the millennia, most of these viral genes have become so riddled with mutations that they have become the genetic equivalent of fossils: inert and semi-degraded. There are a couple of exceptions. In humans, two families of retroviruses have been identified that, under certain circumstances, can reawaken and start producing small pieces of viral proteins that can activate the immune system. Not long after this discovery, signs started to emerge that these enemies within might be contributing to some relatively common human diseases
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Studies suggest that our cells may be less able to keep these viral elements suppressed during times of stress”

Küry realised that he would have to look at how HERV-W interacts with neighbouring brain cells. Using brain tissue from deceased MS patients, Küry and his colleagues showed that a HERV-W protein called ENV activates brain-based immune cells called microglia, which not only directly damage neurons, but also interfere with their repair. “Now that we’ve identified a protein, we can start to think about how to neutralise it with an antibody,” says Küry, who published the results last year.
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Dolei notes that a disproportionate number of her MS patients report having experienced glandular fever (infectious mononucleosis) – caused by infection with the Epstein-Barr virus – as teenagers or young adults. Possibly, the infection triggers changes in DNA folding that leave some previously buried viruses exposed, prompting them to stagger to life like molecular versions of Frankenstein’s monster. In the case of people with HIV, their weakened immune systems may be less able to spot and destroy cells containing reactivated viruses
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As an HIV doctor in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Nath had a front-row seat to the lifesaving power of antiretroviral drugs. He prescribed them to all his patients – including the young man with ALS. That the drugs decreased the amount of HIV in the man’s blood and boosted his T-cell counts was no surprise to Nath. But the rapid improvement of ALS-like symptoms in people with HIV hinted that these drugs might be effective against other retroviruses: the resurrected fossils in our genomes. He is now recruiting people for a small pilot study to test whether giving a cocktail of three antiretroviral drugs is beneficial to people with ALS who don’t have HIV and who have high levels of HERV-K activity. A recent study suggests that this group may comprise a fifth of people with ALS
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Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/articl...may-reawaken-and-cause-illness/#ixzz6FGpYXf00

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/articl...may-reawaken-and-cause-illness/#ixzz6FGpAQYmq
 
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