Humans and their best friend dogs may have exchanged genetic material over the millennia via viruses, scientists believe. It’s known that all mammals and most vertebrates (or creatures with backbones) possess retroviruses — such as HIV that have the ability to incorporate their genetic material into that of their hosts — in their genomes.
To get a broader picture of how deeply retroviruses have invaded genomes, a team of scientists in Sweden analysed the first sequenced carnivore genome, that of a female dog of the boxer breed.
They found that “endogenous” retroviruses only seem to make up 0.15 per cent of the dog genome, six times less than humans, LiveScience reported.
It’s because dogs may have better mechanisms to protect their genomes against retroviruses, or their genomes may house unknown types of retroviruses that current techniques can’t yet detect, the researchers said. Intriguingly, they discovered a novel group of retroviral material in dogs that is highly similar to endogenous retroviruses seen in humans. They belong to a type of virus known as gammaretroviruses.
—PTI