• Question from:Jake

I have search the internet for an answer but different results keep coming up depending which website i look at i i don't know which one is factual.
First of all jush how many ERVs (elements and fragments) are there in our genome. Some sources say we have about "30,000 differnt retroviruses" in our genome ,(http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section4.html#retroviruses)
while others suggest it is actually  "98,000 ERV elements and fragments" (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC387345/), and further still some sources say that we have 200,000 Erv elements and fragments in our genome or more (http://justatheory.webs.com/endogenous-retroviruses, https://richarddawkins.net/2013/11/knoc … tionists/, http://www.evolutionarymodel.com/ervs.htm)

So that is my first question, my second is how many do we share with chimps?, i have heard it said that we share 99.9% of our ERVs with them and others say (include some creationist websites) that we only share about 7 or 14 of out tens of thousands of ERVs with chimps.

Photo
  • University of Bristol
  • Posts: 4,230

Q1: you are right the figures vary as does the cited percentage of the human genome that are ERVs. that is because the definition of an ERV (many are fragments) will vary from study to study and also the annotation of the human genome is getting better and more details and thus the number rises. Most recent papers would say 6-8%. see
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3228705/

Q2: the paper comparing the 2 genomes is below and as you can see there is discussion on full length and functional ERVs which is somewhat different to total fragments. As above as the annotation and details of the 2 genomes improve and are compared better figures will arise. There are cetainly many examples where ERVs are very similar between the 2 species.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article … rt=classic
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 … 04072.html