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| -Signs, Portents, and the Weather- |
| Aids/HIV: Origin of pandemic 'was 1920s Kinshasa' |
| 2014-10-05 |
| [BBC] A team at the University of Oxford and the University of Leuven, in Belgium, tried to reconstruct HIV's "family tree" and find out where its oldest ancestors came from. The research group analysed mutations in HIV's genetic code. "You can see the footprints of history in today's genomes, it has left a record, a mutation mark in the HIV genome that can't be eradicated," Prof Oliver Pybus from the University of Oxford told the BBC. By reading those mutational marks, the research team rebuilt the family tree and traced its roots. HIV is a mutated version of a chimpanzee virus, known as simian immunodeficiency virus, which probably made the species-jump through contact with infected blood while handling bush meat. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #1 through contact with infected blood while handling bush meat I don't want to think of what that means. |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2014-10-05 23:37 |