I'm currently doing a precis + critique on this journal article that just came out. Its about how scientists brought together several non-fullly functional human endogenous retrovirus' and built the ancesteral form of this virus (5 million years old)-called "Phoenix"

Now, I'm trying to relate this back to biological anthropology+ evolution...and I recall that at roughly 5 million years ago human and chimps split...But I just can't pinpoint the connection and the meaning behind it.

Here is a news article of the actual journal article which is 9 pages long.
http://www.innovation-report.com/html/reports/life_sciences/report-73235.html


If there is anyone familiar with this topic please help!

Everyone else is stupid, and I refuse to help, so you're out of luck.

Who the hell is SK?

SiliconKowboy?

>.>

The missing link = the answer.

Silent Killer

silent killa? awesome.

Whos SiliconKowboy?

Oh you know. SiliconCowboy's evil twin.

Yeah I saw this one; they were going to use the virus to kill all the cylons.

Actually, isn't evolution a silly idea?

Why do you say that?

Ahh yes, I remember now. Well, at least if we get a Cylon problem again we'll be ready.



Don't be silly.

.

how can u argue something based on faith...?

[QUOTE=SK's GF]I'm currently doing a precis + critique on this journal article that just came out. Its about how scientists brought together several non-fullly functional human endogenous retrovirus' and built the ancesteral form of this virus (5 million years old)-called "Phoenix"

Now, I'm trying to relate this back to biological anthropology+ evolution...and I recall that at roughly 5 million years ago human and chimps split...But I just can't pinpoint the connection and the meaning behind it.

Here is a news article of the actual journal article which is 9 pages long.
http://www.innovation-report.com/html/reports/life_sciences/report-73235.html


If there is anyone familiar with this topic please help! .([/QUOTE]
What are you trying to do?

Both arguments have holes and missing information, and arguing either of them is fruitless.

axis...being christian doesn't mean you have to be against evolution.

[QUOTE=SK's GF]how can u argue something based on faith...?[/QUOTE]
Oh, but they can. They most certainly can.

Like a talking snake...?

That Image there? Is that the one ring to unite them all after if fell into the lavapit in Orodruin

** Adjusts his nerd glasses

I live in Phoenix.

She's trying to summerize and explain the article.

Can't help you with that.

But damn I got this stain of godbothering goo by visiting this thread. Yuck.

The connection

Basically, human endogenous retroviruses are remnants of ancestral infections of primates by active retroviruses. Now, the term "5 million years old" comes up because thats when humans split from the primate line. At this point and thereafter, humans were no longer infected by active retroviruses, and what's left are what we call "human endogenous retroviruses", which are "remnants" of the ancestral infections.

So, what this lab did was derive in silico the sequence of the ancestral progenitor of the HERV-K family of retroviruses (a family of human endogenous retroviruses) and construct it (which they dubbed "Phoenix" oooh dramatic). As it turns out, they did it correctly since the "phoenix" was shown to produce viral particles that disclose all of the structural and finctional properties of a retrovirus, and could also infect mammalian including human cells. The retrovirus that integrated also showed the exact signature found in endogenous HERV-K progeny.

The lab also showed that recombinations among present-day HERV-K loci in humans in vivo can generate functional HERV-K elements, indicating that our cells still *could* produce infectious retroviruses.

By the way, this isn't really a precis, just something I cooked up from the abstract so that you might understand the article better. I'm procrastinating... also, forgot to mention that you might need to know a little bit about what a retrovirus is exactly and what human endogenous retroviruses are to understand the article/what i just said.

Except that we 'split' from chimps a hell of a lot longer ago then 5 million years... In fact, the Homonid line appeared 30 million years ago, and though chimps are our closest relatives, the common ancestor would be whatever came right before the first homonid. We are the only homonid species left because we're so good at killing everything else. If they are talking about a virus that affected homonids 5 million years ago, then sure, there were a few species of homonid about. Notably the neanderthal, which was almost as smart as us and quite successful.

The place where most religious people get it wrong is that they think evolution means we are descended from monkeys. That's not right at all. We are related to monkeys, the same way we are related to our cousins. Does that make us descendants of our cousins? No, it just means you have a common grandparent. That's the part everyone gets wrong: We didn't descend from chimps, we just have a common ancestor. Incidentally, we aren't descended from neanderthals either. They were probably smart enough to have language and sophisticated social structures and they were skilled tool users, but we were just a little bit better and kicked their asses. They were our siblings, not our parents.

ah. ya got me, i didnt verify what SK's gf said before i posted :-P. was too lazy to refresh my memory on the evolutionary pathway

[QUOTE=Vincent Valentine]I live in Phoenix.[/QUOTE]

The virus was named after your state because you're all ridden with disease.

No it was engineered to kill off the mormons.

You're ridden with disease too.

Pheonix is a city, buddy.

How was I supposed to know that!

[QUOTE=SK's GF]how can u argue something based on faith...?[/QUOTE]
It's quite simple. Haven't you seen thank you for smoking? As long as you argue your point correctly, you're never wrong!

I named my computer Phoenix after the city. My dad named all his comps after Arizona cities, but he had all old comps, so Phoenix was an obvious choice.

I used a Phoenix Down in some Final Fantasy game once.

Or actually a lot of times.

i saw both versions of flight of the phoenix.

and read harry potter and the order of the phoenix.

and i also know what a phoenix is.

acutally, recent studies have shown that chimps and ancestral human split from their common ancester around 5-7 million years ago...

but anways, I need to rephrase what I said after talkin to my prof.
what the hell was happening 5 million years ago, and how does this retrovirus have anythin to do with it! ...he mentioned about how you can determine what the environment is like through phoenix... i guess i'll be doing some more research.

- most likely chimps and humans diverged before this virus...so it was prob part of australopithecus...
-earlier, i was just thinking that there could be a connection-maybe maybe not.
-i just written the precis part,...but stll can't really figure out the direct connection.
sighh

thnx!
ps. i'm actually in kinesiology, so this is quite different to what i normally study

The split between the line leading to humans and the line leading to chimps occurred sometime between 8 and 5 million years ago. Neanderthals did not show up until around 350000 years ago. I agree with the point of your second paragraph, though there are paleontologists that contend that there was at least some degree of interbreeding with Neanderthals once modern humans reached Europe and the Middle East.

It's possible that we were still closely related enough to breed. On the other hand, neanderthal women were hairy. What self respecting cro-magnun man would have one? So it must have been the big dumb neanderthal men clubbing our chicks over the head and dragging them off.

Damn. I was off by a full factor of 10. Clearly God had a big whip and was yelling 'Evolve! Evolve!'. There's no other way to explain how we got so awesome so god damned fast!

And of course, finding the 'missing link' just means you have to find two more links... one on either side.

[QUOTE=Vincent Valentine]I live in Phoenix.[/QUOTE]
I AM a Phoenix.

recent studies have shown that we did not breed wid neandertals...they just sequenced their genome a few months back.
we kind of drove them out