INFECTIOUS INSERTIONS: Today's songbirds are harboring traces of ancient viral strains in their genomes, giving researchers a new understanding of the disease's age and evolutionary history. Image: ISTOCKPHOTO/GLOBAL IPFrom Scientific American:
Genetic traces of an ancient hepatitis B-like virus confounds common knowledge about viral evolution.
Viruses can be thought of as hyperspeed shape-shifters, organisms that can adapt quickly to overcome barriers to infection. But recent research has been finding ancient traces of many viruses in animal genomes, DNA insertions that have likely been there for much longer than the viruses were previously thought to have existed at all.
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