If you're looking for your own idea of your own identity you know the human genome may not be the best place to look for it. You're just looking at a bunch of viruses.
Carl ZimmerBorna virus is not a retrovirus. It doesn't actually insert its own genes into our cells. What it does is just hangs out near our DNA and uses some of the molecular machinery to copy itself.
Carl ZimmerOne of the big challenges now is to figure out just how many viruses there really are in the human genome. So far the estimate is 8.3% of our genome is virus, but it actually could be a lot higher.
Carl ZimmerAbout 1.2% of the human genome is made up of genes, things that encode for proteins, the stuff that we consider us. There is about 8.3% that's a virus. In other words we're probably about seven times more virus than we are human genes, which is kind of a weird way to thinking about yourself.
Carl ZimmerI wouldn't be a very good hunter without these glasses. I'm not a very good hunter with these glasses, but I'd be even worse without them, so that would put a crimp in how many kids I could have, so all of these medical advances have at least in some parts of the world blunted natural selection.
Carl Zimmer