Why Aren't the Twin Locations of >100k+ ERV's (human vs. chimp) Discussed More?

[Cornelius_Hunter]

@pevaquark

So your point is that humans gained some kind of mechanism to help us

If your point is that there would be a selective advantage, yes, I agree. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be selected for. But it is an unknown mechanism that must have been there, which doesn’t seem to be doing its job against HIV, BTW. From the paper:

there seems to have been an episode in which the ancestral human lineage was somehow ‘purged’ of these endemic viruses. One testable hypothesis is that human-specific loss of the sialic acid N-glycolylneuraminic acid, which would normally be acquired by such enveloped viruses, could restrict viral transmission because of the simultaneous appearance of antibodies against this sialic acid in hominins.