Koala Retroviruses and Human Evolution

Some proponents of universal common ancestor got a notion that perhaps retroviruses gave humans part of our DNA, but they had no observational evidence. After all, this supposedly took millions of Darwin years. So they decided to see if the retroviruses in koalas provided them some clues.


Evolutionists think that part of our DNA came from outside through retroviruses. An examination of koalas did not support this idea.
Credit: Morguefile / cooee
Such a notion is not entirely unreasonable since scientists have speculations and want to see if there is some evidence to support them. A retrovirus adds its own genome into a host without even asking permission of saying thanks. Koalas have the KoRV that infects genomes, so researchers attempted to correlate this activity to our own genome. However, they neglected many important pieces of information and reasoning, including what the virus does to the koalas, and that the creation explanation is that the retroviruses began with the host organism instead of being interlopers.
Some evolutionists allege that 8% of the human genome originated from viruses. This number is ambiguous, since different authors include different genetic elements as viruses, such as SINEs and LINEs. For example, Alu elements make up at least 11% of the human genome. According to another study, 22.4% of the genome is covered by endogenous retroviruses (ERVs). They claim that this came about when viruses infected humans and inserted their DNA into the human genome. This process is believed to have taken place over millions of years of evolutionary time. However, this has never been scientifically proven by direct observation.
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But how do retroviruses such as KoRV manage to insert themselves in the genome of a species? . . . Usually, retroviruses spread horizontally, from individual to individual, sometimes causing illness as they go along. But this process does not allow them to insert themselves permanently as part of the genetic material of a given species. What researchers want to see is whether the virus can transmit itself vertically, from parent to offspring.
To read the entire article, click on "Do koalas prove that humans got part of their DNA from viruses?"