Logo

An Ebola Surprise

Jul 31, 2010

Pieces of retroviruses are known littered throughout vertebrate genomes, and Anna Marie Skalka and her colleagues say that part of other viruses may also be found there. Taking an informatics-based approach, she and her colleagues compared the single-stranded RNA genomes of non-retroviruses to the genomes of 48 vertebrates, including humans and guinea pigs. As they report in PLoS Pathogens, they found that nearly half of the vertebrate genomes contained sequences from the Mononegavirales order — which includes Bornaviruses and the Filoviruses, Ebola and Marburg. The sequences date to about 40 million years ago, the researchers add. "We speculate that some of these must have provided an evolutionary advantage," Skalka tells Wired.

Breaking News
The Scan

Myotonic Dystrophy Repeat Detected in Family Genome Sequencing Analysis

While sequencing individuals from a multi-generation family, researchers identified a myotonic dystrophy type 2-related short tandem repeat in the European Journal of Human Genetics.

TB Resistance Insights Gleaned From Genome Sequence, Antimicrobial Response Assays

Researchers in PLOS Biology explore M. tuberculosis resistance with a combination of sequencing and assays looking at the minimum inhibitory concentrations of 13 drugs.

Mendelian Disease Genes Prioritized Using Tissue-Specific Expression Clues

Mendelian gene candidates could be flagged for further functional analyses based on tissue-specific transcriptome and proteome profiles, a new Journal of Human Genetics paper says.

Single-Cell Sequencing Points to Embryo Mosaicism

Mosaicism may affect preimplantation genetic tests for aneuploidy, a single-cell sequencing-based analysis of almost three dozen embryos in PLOS Genetics finds.