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Asked by busy499had on 29 Apr 2024.
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Zoe Vance answered on 29 Apr 2024:
Probably one of the viruses that we ended up keeping within our DNA! Some viruses integrate their genetic material into that of their host, so some percentage of our genome is made up from viruses that infected our far off ancestors – endogenous retroviruses or ERVs. The most beneficial one is probably the one that is now a syncytin gene, a gene that mammals need to have in order to make a placenta during pregnancy! Viruses have an ability to fuse with cell membranes, which is useful for them trying to get into the cell, but mammals have co-opted that to fuse lots of cells together into the placenta.
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Michael Schubert answered on 6 Jun 2024:
I like Zoe’s answer!
I was going to say something a little different: “benefit” depends on your situation. For example, people with something called sickle cell trait (one copy of the sickle cell anemia gene) are more protected against malaria than people without the gene. That’s great if you live somewhere with a lot of malaria! But if you don’t, then having that gene increases the chances that your children might get two copies of the gene and have sickle cell anaemia, which isn’t good because it means your blood doesn’t work as well. So the gene is sometimes beneficial and sometimes harmful.
I would say the answer to your question is that most diseases are not beneficial (although some are not harmful either), but there are times when having a specific characteristic can be helpful!
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