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za4h t1_jclts4d wrote

Reply to comment by -Metacelsus- in Are there any known endogenous retroviruses that can cause active infections, and is this possible in principle? by amlyo

It sounds like the nature of the question is can a virus endogenous to the host creature infect that creature?

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-Metacelsus- t1_jclu1iy wrote

If it's endogenous then the creature is already infected.

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Uncynical_Diogenes t1_jcm5rm0 wrote

They might carry it, sure, but I’d argue it was likely their great-grandparent^nth that was actually infected.

I think this line of inquiry is more about re-emergence of previously-dormant ERVs. As a human, some ~1-8% of my DNA is ERVs, depending on who you ask, but I’m pretty confident that I was never infected by any of them myself. I was just born carrying them.

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Neurokeen t1_jcmt6y7 wrote

It actually gets to a really interesting question as to "what counts as infected?"

If there's latent proviral inserts that never activate and propagate, to the point that they're ubiquitous in the DNA of the host, then it strains the definition a bit in most contexts. If you're doing genomics then for those purposes it makes sense to call it an infection. If you're doing something at the level of epidemiology, then probably not.

Having a bunch of boundary cases in definitions is pretty much a staple for biology though, so it's not worth losing any sleep over.

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