Thursday, December 09, 2004
BBC NEWS | Health | Key HIV-fighting genes identified
Not only are human immune responses to HIV causing rapid changes in the virus, HIV is also causing rapid evolutionary changes in humans."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Great article and a fascinating read but this sentence
“Normally, the process of mutual adaptation would take thousands of years.” is not science fact. It was assumed to be so for a very long time and now is no longer held the unquestioned fact. Indeed, this response to HIV may well be proving the “slow steady change” theory to be wrong. In the end, though, adaptation may well be a combination of both “slow steady” (as in how a species might adapt to a change in climate) and “punctuated” (as in how humans are adapting to HIV)
Yes, punctuated equilibrium, I think Gould called it. Consider, though, if humans did NOT adapt, it could wipe out the species. As it is it is prolonged and working through people like a thresher taking down corn stalks.
So, there could be more information: what triggers this rapid adaptation? And incredibly neat that such rapid adaptation is yet another magic feature of the whole business? And how far back does this "process" extend? It has nothing at all to do with "human"... only life. A few billion years of it.
Post a Comment