In a message dated 3/13/00 2:14:36 AM Pacific Standard Time,
charlie@antipope.org writes:
> Is anyone contemplating the possibility that senescence in mammals and
> some other vertebrates may be due to the presence of one or more archaic
> retroviruses?
Yes. See Woodruff and Nitikin, 1995, in Genetical Research.
Technically they're looking at a DNA transposable element
rather than an endogenous retrovirus but I suspect the
principle is the same.
My Mac monitor is dead at the moment so I can't give you
an exact cite.
>Such a virus wouldn't be
>selected out if it had a long, slow onset -- as witness the appearance
>of CJD being a hereditary trait rather than a very slow infection that
>is transmitted to the next generation in utero, long before the mother
>succumbs to it. It'd need some sort of "reset switch" (triggered at time
>of meiosis, maybe?)
Meiosis does indeed "reset" some transposable elements, although the
effect sometimes goes in the wrong direction, i.e., activity declines with
age and then pops back up in the next generation.
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