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Comment by otherme123 | Hacker News Reader

Do you have oral herpes? The virus inserts their sequence in your DNA, where it remains dormant. When it awakes, if you spread it to some other person, its sequence is also inserted in their DNA.

The event shown in this paper is the same but infecting germinal cells, and getting passed to the next generations (i.e. it doesn't cause damage). Sometimes it could carry foreign (to the virus-like) DNA.

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Do you have a citation? I have never heard of this and am curious about this mechanism!

this is horizontal gene flow. transposable elements are one of a number of vectors. viral transfer is another [herpes, ad supra]

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-021-01026-3

Thanks! Still, the article does not back the claim of the parent. The citation that is given for the horizontal gene transfer in herpesvirus states the following:

> herpesviruses are known to capture host genes to evade host defenses. [0]

That still sounds like a one-way gene transfer, and in no way an 'insertion into your DNA to stay dormant' as parent claims.

[0]: https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/JVI.00359-18

Ah, apologies, I thought you were interested in horizontal transfer. Honestly, now I'm not sure what your question is: the herpes virus' dormancy, or it's DNA insertion. The DNA insertion is already well documented, as is the dormancy, although I have no idea as to the mechanisms for said dormancy. Well, thanks for the rabbit hole!

Hope this helps: https://journals.asm.org/doi/abs/10.1128/cmr.10.3.419

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