Viruses are what!?! (A not so brief summary of Ch. 6 of Survival of the Sickest)

So, according to this book Survival of the Sickest, ⅓ of our DNA consists of viruses.

And I know what you're thinking, "I thought we were supposed to fight viruses and blah blah blah."

But believe it or not, not all viruses are bad. It's just like how not all bacteria is bad.

But we'll get back to that in a bit.

So, way back when during the time of "thee"s "thou"s and "thine"s (okay, maybe not that far back), a whole ton of people were dying from smallpox, except for milkmaids who had been infected with cowpox.

Now one might have screamed "witchcraft" and burned the milkmaids, but country doctor Edward Jenner saw this as a way to cure smallpox by using the cowpox virus, and thus the vaccine was born! (Fun fact, vaccine is actually derived from the Latin word "vacca" meaning cow)

Our DNA is 97% "junk". Only 3% of it contains instructions for building cells. But scientists later discovered that the other DNA wasn't junk after all.

One third of DNA consists of viruses and that is incredibly important, especially with evolution.

You see, there's this theory that French scientist Jean-Baptiste Lamark thought of called the inherited acquired traits theory. Basically, if your parents, let's say were bodybuilders, then you would also be born with guns of steel because your parents had guns of steel. And, oh my god was Lamark made fun of for that idea.

But he wasn't completely wrong.

Barbara McClintock discovered another part of the useless "junk DNA" called "jumping genes". Scientifically, they're known as transposons. These DNA move from one place to another due to environmental stress. They're basically like the "Oh my god I'm so screwed I haven't finished my history essay. Let me just copy and paste this from Wikipedia and be done." (DO NOT PLAGIARIZE EVER! THAT WAS A JOKE)

Transposons copy a certain DNA and moves it to another place while still keeping the original DNA in its place.

These"jumping genes" make up a huge amount of our DNA.

Now, you must be thinking, "Yeah cool this is perfect. Nothing will go wrong."

But that's also how people thought the United States Confederacy was going to be and we all know that that did not happen. (Let's be honest, the government right now isn't doing to well either.)

Humans get sick (and sometimes die) because viruses are also evil! Most viruses are made up of RNA, not DNA. However, these viruses (retroviruses) have this enzyme called reverse transcriptase (jeez I wonder what that does). This enzyme transcribes the virus from RNA into DNA and then go and take over a cell until that cell explodes and then there are so many of them that they're all over the place and your cells are exploding from left to right and…you're sick.

Dramatic right?

But viruses stop viruses! And that's why viruses are important and that's also why you should probably get your flu shot (but don't listen to me because I never get a flu shot).

Now here's the real question. How would you rather want the human race to be wiped out: nuclear war or super deadly mutant virus that takes over everything?