<story><title>The human genome is full of viruses</title><url>https://medium.com/medical-myths-and-models/the-human-genome-is-full-of-viruses-c18ba52ac195</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>crazygringo</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Even after recovering from an infection there will always be a piece of that virus encoded within your DNA.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I did a little research and this appears to be &lt;i&gt;almost completely false&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;This sentence makes it sound like every time you get a cold, your body&amp;#x27;s DNA is permanently altered. Which would be insane if true.&lt;p&gt;The reality is that this insane outcome is incredibly rare, but nevertheless has happened enough times &lt;i&gt;over all of human history&lt;/i&gt; that we have genetic code from viruses in our DNA, because a virus at some point managed to alter the DNA in a sperm or egg cell.&lt;p&gt;But the quoted sentence is just &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; how infections work 99.99...+% of the time. The cold I got last month isn&amp;#x27;t in my DNA forever. It&amp;#x27;s very sloppy writing that appears to be aiming for sensationalism instead of accuracy.</text></comment>
<story><title>The human genome is full of viruses</title><url>https://medium.com/medical-myths-and-models/the-human-genome-is-full-of-viruses-c18ba52ac195</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>_bxg1</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve always thought of DNA as mere &amp;quot;data&amp;quot;. &amp;quot;This goes here, that goes there&amp;quot;, etc. And I&amp;#x27;ve always wondered how such a relatively small amount of data could describe the massive complexity of a full-size organism.&lt;p&gt;But this makes it sound like DNA is data the way Lisp is data: it can contain procedures and transformations and meta-statements about itself, and even mutate during the course of being interpreted. That would explain so much.&lt;p&gt;The use of the term &amp;quot;virus&amp;quot; in software seems to be more apt than I&amp;#x27;d thought.</text></comment>