GoKawiilResearchers find human skin virus carrying ancient human BC200 gene
Scientists report that molluscum contagiosum virus (MCV), which infects human skin cells, contains a copy of BC200, a noncoding RNA gene unique to humans and related primates that is believed to have been acquired from ancestral genomes roughly 100,000 years ago. BC200 is normally abundant in neurons and is thought to help regulate protein production, but it is also a 'jumping gene' capable of inserting itself elsewhere in the genome, and researchers say MCV appears to be the only known virus to carry it.