Paleovirology explores evolutionary history of HIV in hopes of finding cure

The Malayan flying lemur is a small brown animal with buggy eyes…[A] group of Czech scientists discovered another trait of this mammal: Deep within its genome is DNA of the oldest extinct virus related to HIV. They dated it to be around 60 million years old — meaning it was circulating when Europe and Greenland were still connected.

A lot of virus-fighting happens in the “now” — developing drugs, predicting where viruses will spread, and quarantining those infected.

But a relatively new field of research called paleovirology is taking a broader view: considering viruses on an evolutionary scale.

At the heart of the research is the growing awareness that we’ve lived alongside viruses for millions of years — and that buried in the traces of those relationships could be insights into how we battle them in the future.

“You’re digging into these genomes on your computer and suddenly finding these ancient relatives of viruses,”…said [Aris Katzourakis, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Oxford]. “It’s like finding a miraculous fossil that a physical paleontologist could not hope to unearth.[“]

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: Genetic fossil-hunters dig through HIV’s long history for clues to new treatments

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