{"id":2056,"date":"2007-12-24T19:02:07","date_gmt":"2007-12-25T00:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/2007\/12\/24\/viruses-and-hacking-the-human-genome\/"},"modified":"2007-12-24T19:02:07","modified_gmt":"2007-12-25T00:02:07","slug":"viruses-and-hacking-the-human-genome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2007\/12\/24\/viruses-and-hacking-the-human-genome\/","title":{"rendered":"Viruses and hacking the human genome"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Via my friend Rob Hyndman (who came across it <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hyperorg.com\/blogger\/2007\/12\/24\/viruses-as-evolutions-sculptor\/\">via<\/a> David &#8220;Joho the Blog&#8221; Weinberger), I just finished reading a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/reporting\/2007\/12\/03\/071203fa_fact_specter?printable=true\">fascinating article<\/a> in The New Yorker about how HIV-style &#8220;retroviruses&#8221; from millions of years ago have successively rewritten the human genome, and may have even been instrumental in reprogramming our DNA in ways that helped the human race to survive &#8212; for example, by causing proto-humans to develop the ability to give birth to their young alive.<\/p>\n<p>One of the disturbing aspects of the article (at least to me) was the description of how researchers had recreated, Jurassic Park style, a virus that existed hundreds of thousands of years ago, and how:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Thanks to steady advances in computing power and DNA technology, a talented undergraduate with a decent laptop and access to any university biology lab can assemble a virus with ease.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Kind of a disturbing image: a medical hacker with some mail-order biological material and a virus database, working away in some basement lab. I realize there have been movies and books about this concept, but it always seemed like science fiction. Now it seems a lot more like just plain science. But even apart from that kind of movie-of-the-week idea, I think it&#8217;s fascinating that horrible epidemics in the past may have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/reporting\/2007\/12\/03\/071203fa_fact_specter?printable=true\">helped create<\/a> the human race as we know it.<\/p>\n<div class=\"syndication-links\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Via my friend Rob Hyndman (who came across it via David &#8220;Joho the Blog&#8221; Weinberger), I just finished reading a fascinating article in The New Yorker about how HIV-style &#8220;retroviruses&#8221; from millions of years ago have successively rewritten the human genome, and may have even been instrumental in reprogramming our DNA in ways that helped &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2007\/12\/24\/viruses-and-hacking-the-human-genome\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Viruses and hacking the human genome&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2056\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}