Virus stole poison genes from black widow spider | Hacker News Reader

Virus stole poison genes from black widow spider

bbc.com

202 pointskawera38 comments

Robert Weinberg's The Biology of Cancer has a great chapter on the early history of cancer research and its connection with virology and a chance occurrence leading to discovery.

There was a chicken breeder who noticed that some of his birds were getting tumors and he brought them to Rous, who exposed healthy bird cells to an extract of the tumor. He was able to figure out that in this case cancer was being transmitted by a virus. Later analysis showed that the virus itself doesn't cause cancer, but that this particular strain was "lucky" and picked up an oncogene (basically took a normal tyrosine kinase gene that is involved in the cell cycle from a chicken and incorporated it into the virus, making cell replication more rapid).

This happens all the time with retroviruses in the wild. I find it interesting because the key to the virus' ability to cause tumors actually lies in using the normal cells' own machinery. Sort of like uncovering an ancient archeological site and decoding a text only to see it is about your civilization!

Sort of like uncovering an ancient archeological site and decoding a text only to see it is about your civilization!

Sounds like a great premise for a roguelike :)

Isn't something roughly like this the premise of Stephen Baxter's manifold trilogy? Idk, it's been awhile...

Don't forget about the dog that decided to become cancer: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2016/05/18/contagiou...

Similar to bovine leukaemia virus causing around 37% of breast cancer.

Do you have a source for this claim?

I googled it because I was very skeptical. This is not the paper but the press release to what I think the above commenter was referring to:

http://news.berkeley.edu/2015/09/15/bovine-leukemia-virus-br...

A PLOS one paper showing evidence of this virus in 59% of breast cancers sampled compared to 29% in non cancerous breast tissue of other women. N size was 239.

I think this deserves future study to see why there is this apparent association but the above poster's claim that this shows that it 'causes 39% of breast cancer' is simply not credible at this time.

My claim is a bit of a stretch, 37% may be attributable. Mechanistic cause is still a bit shaky.

G C Buehring, H M Shen, H M Jensen, D L Jin, M Hudes, G Block. Exposure to Bovine Leukemia Virus Is Associated with Breast Cancer: A Case-Control Study. PLoS One. 2015 Sep 2;10(9):e0134304.

G C Buehring, H M Shen, H M Jensen, K Y Choi, D Sun, G Nuovo. Bovine leukemia virus DNA in human breast tissue. Emerg Infect Dis. 2014 May;20(5):772-82.

K Alibek, A Kakpenova, A Mussabekova, M Sypabekova, N Karatayeva. Role of viruses in the development of breast cancer. Infect Agent Cancer. 2013 Sep 2;8:32.

J Akhter, M A Ali Aziz, A Al Ajlan, A Tulbah, M Akhtar. Breast cancer: is there a viral connection? Adv Anat Pathol. 2014 Sep;21(5):373-81.

G C Buehring, S M Philpott, K Y Choi. Humans have antibodies reactive with Bovine leukemia virus. AIDS Res Hum Retroviruses. 2003 Dec;19(12):1105-13.

J S Lawson, B Heng. Viruses and breast cancer. Cancers (Basel). 2010 Apr 30;2(2):752-72.

(Author unknown) Bovine Leukosis Virus (BLV) on U.S. Dairy Operations, 2007.Veterinary ServicesCenters for Epidemiology and Animal Health. APHIS Info Sheet.

J F Ferrer, S J Kenyon, P Gupta. Milk of dairy cows frequently contains a leukemogenic virus. Science. 1981 Aug 28;213(4511):1014-6.

G C Buehring, P M Kramme, R D Schultz. Evidence for bovine leukemia virus in mammary epithelial cells of infected cows. Lab Invest. 1994 Sep;71(3):359-65.

> "genetic theft" ... "chunks of arachnid DNA were probably stolen"

...wrote the journalist who also moonshines as RIAA pamphleteer?

(I find it more illuminating to think of the gene being the active party, hitching a ride on a new vehicle.)

Interesting. So, would that count as prior art for any patents that are based on moving genetic material from one organism to another?

I didn't see anything in the article that referenced this, but why is the assumption being made that the virus acquired the genes from black widows and not the other way around?

For one thing, it's a lot easier and more common for the transfer to go in that direction. If you think about the life cycles and what would have to happen in each case, one is just a lot more likely than the other.

This article by Ed Yong in The Atlantic contains the following paragraph about this [1]: It’s possible that the spiders got the latrotoxin gene from the virus, or that the two evolved their copies independently. But by comparing the various versions of latrotoxin, the Bordensteins think that it’s most likely that the virus got the gene from spiders. It certainly had the right opportunity, since Wolbachia, its host microbe, does indeed infect black widows. The phage could have picked up spider DNA directly from the creature’s own cells. Or Wolbachia could have picked up spider DNA and then transferred it to the phage. Or other as-yet-unidentified viruses and bacteria could have acted as intermediaries.

- [1] http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/10/the-virus...

Unless the virus injected the gene into the black widows' gametes, the introduced gene would leave the spider population when that individual spider died. It's possible, but lowers the odds of an already unlikely process.

Meanwhile, viruses slurp up DNA from their hosts all the time.

Well, many Wolbachia infect the gonads of their hosts...

> The researchers think the virus uses latrotoxin to enter animal cells and reach the bacteria that it targets.

How would it do that? The phage can't synthesize latrotoxin itself, so it would need to instruct its bacterial host to produce it. Can bacteria even produce this toxin properly, with all proper post-translational modifications?

Secondly, how is it even obtaining the spider DNA when it infects the bacteria. I've heard of viruses packing extra nucleic acid from their hosts into their particulate forms when they replicate, but how does the spider DNA get into the bacteria so that this can happen?

Post translationally processing is done by the eukaryotic host cell. The section "Toxin activation by eukaryotic furin cleavage" has details - http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13155.

Evolution has some very interesting ways to increase chances of survival. Still most of the species that ever lived are extinct today. Those alive have beaten great odds.

Viruses are the enigma of evolution. Are they just chemicals, or living?

> Still most of the species that ever lived are extinct today.

Depends on your view of the Ship of Theseus.

We wouldn't be able to mate with Nakalipithecus nakayamai, so they are indeed a distinct species despite being our ancestor.

By this criterion, there are very, very few bacterial species.

Or rather, each bacterium is its own species?

Why? Bacteria exchange DNA with each other.

I seem to recall this being the reason the sexual reproduction definition of species is considered problematic. It's a convenient definition for animals but breaks down for most other things, and even the animal kingdom has some funky edge cases, like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebroid.

Are you sure that's a real question? The answer is probably just that the words you're using don't quite fit the underlying reality.

> Viruses are the enigma of evolution. Are they just chemicals, or living?

Biology is full of edge cases like this. For a few more examples, google "species problem". Human beings often like to classify things into discrete groups, but that doesn't necessarily map onto the natural world all that well.

indeed. This reminds me of the arguments about whether fungus is a plant or an animal.

Natural selection mostly selects against change. Without selection the cockroach would have mutated.

Viruses are not an enigma, another parasitic genetic element are Inteins - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intein.

Viruses are not living, because they have no metabolism and they cannot self-replicate (they require the replication apparatus of the host)

Viruses are not self-contained systems, they are more like organelles of cells, which transfer data between hosts.

edit: sorry I didn't been organelles I meant vesicles in cells

This seems to me like saying "wow, that frame of film on that movie sure is lucky to be up there right now" 24 times a second.

Wouldn't "copied" be more appropriate? Unless the spider has patented or copyrighted the genes.

Tangent: It's venom, not poison.

Oh, look at what the cat drug in! You pedantic use-the-word-wright peoples make me nauseous. ;-)

Glad to upset you. ;]

I see what you did there.

Though I believe it's I who should be upsetting you.

One can try...

Very cool!

It took me way too long to realize the article was not referring to a computer virus.

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