Forbin
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I wonder, though, if a mouse virus that may have only recently jumped to humans has had enough time to be all that optimized for success in humans. Mice and humans are both mammals, but our life spans are obviously quite different, to give just one example.
Overstressed
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There are others who can correct me, but if you think of recent, then you need to think in terms of 'thousands' of years, not just 30 years ago, I think.
OS.
HopingSince88
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I have heard some refer to 'thousands' of years and others mention the late 1800's for a time frame. Is it true that XMRV is endogenous only in lab mice and that it infects wild mice? If that is the case would that support the post-Louis-Pasteur time frame?
anciendaze
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wild type, time scale
To the best of my knowledge, nobody has a lead on a natural reservoir of this virus at present. Even if the results were embargoed until publication, I would expect rumors of such a discovery to leak.
As for the time scale, it is longer than the time scale normally seen in laboratory contamination, where one strain is typically way ahead of others. The six known strains could come into existence in a few years, but, again, we simply don't know. It is possible mutations in almost any place destroy the ability of the virus to reproduce. There simply aren't many things you can change without impacting that ability in this particular virus.
I don't think anyone is in a position to say this came into human populations in a particular time period. I'm guessing times longer than a century.
If connection to the more severe illness I'm hypothesizing as part of the ME spectrum does turn up, then we can look for historical evidence that the virus was causing this long ago. Some signs and symptoms are really hard to ignore.
I'm not claiming any predictive ability of my own. Dr. Coffin published his own article on possible diseases linked to XMRV last October.
To the best of my knowledge, nobody has a lead on a natural reservoir of this virus at present. Even if the results were embargoed until publication, I would expect rumors of such a discovery to leak.
As for the time scale, it is longer than the time scale normally seen in laboratory contamination, where one strain is typically way ahead of others. The six known strains could come into existence in a few years, but, again, we simply don't know. It is possible mutations in almost any place destroy the ability of the virus to reproduce. There simply aren't many things you can change without impacting that ability in this particular virus.
I don't think anyone is in a position to say this came into human populations in a particular time period. I'm guessing times longer than a century.
If connection to the more severe illness I'm hypothesizing as part of the ME spectrum does turn up, then we can look for historical evidence that the virus was causing this long ago. Some signs and symptoms are really hard to ignore.
I'm not claiming any predictive ability of my own. Dr. Coffin published his own article on possible diseases linked to XMRV last October.
HopingSince88
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aciendaze,
looking at the onset of possible diseases is interesting. i think it would also be interesting to look at the trend of these diseases in reverse in order to approximate a 'vanishing point.'
looking at the onset of possible diseases is interesting. i think it would also be interesting to look at the trend of these diseases in reverse in order to approximate a 'vanishing point.'
ramakentesh
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Retroviruses are also implicated in epigenetic gene silencing through methylation of gene promoters.
Forbin
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These are a couple of quotes I found regarding how long ago XRMV may have made the jump to humans.
At the CROI, Dr. Goff said:
The genetic sequence of all XMRV isolates tested across the country, and across diseases, show so little divergence that the virus must have only recently jumped to humans -- likely from a point source and with limited numbers of replication cycles during transmission.
http://www.medpagetoday.com/MeetingCoverage/CROI/18610
And at the CFSAC last October, Dr. Coffin said:
"The clusters and the very close relationship have implied that this transmission may have occurred quite recently and in fact we don’t know but it’s not impossible that it happens all the time, that there is some mouse out in the wild that has this as an endogenous virus and my lab has just begun to look to see if that’s true. And that the virus can be both transmitted from mouse to human and from human to human, it just all remains to be seen, but I think it’s a very important area of study to get aware of where this virus is coming from, when it got into humans and how of course it’s being transmitted among people. "
http://aboutmecfs.org/Rsrch/XMRVCoffin.aspx
It does pretty much come down to what they mean by "recently."
At the CROI, Dr. Goff said:
The genetic sequence of all XMRV isolates tested across the country, and across diseases, show so little divergence that the virus must have only recently jumped to humans -- likely from a point source and with limited numbers of replication cycles during transmission.
http://www.medpagetoday.com/MeetingCoverage/CROI/18610
And at the CFSAC last October, Dr. Coffin said:
"The clusters and the very close relationship have implied that this transmission may have occurred quite recently and in fact we don’t know but it’s not impossible that it happens all the time, that there is some mouse out in the wild that has this as an endogenous virus and my lab has just begun to look to see if that’s true. And that the virus can be both transmitted from mouse to human and from human to human, it just all remains to be seen, but I think it’s a very important area of study to get aware of where this virus is coming from, when it got into humans and how of course it’s being transmitted among people. "
http://aboutmecfs.org/Rsrch/XMRVCoffin.aspx
It does pretty much come down to what they mean by "recently."