科学家发现了一种导致皮肤感染的病毒中潜伏着一个人基因。它可能正在利用我们自身的DNA来感染我们。
Scientists have found a human gene lurking in a virus that causes skin infections. It may be using our own DNA to infect us.
科学家发现了一种具有些许“人性”的病毒，它携带着一个约10万年前从我们祖先那里偷来的基因。这种病毒可能正在利用我们自身的基因来感染我们。
Scientists have discovered a virus that is a tiny bit human, carrying a gene it stole from our ancestors about 100,000 years ago. And this virus may be using our own gene to infect us.
先前的研究已经证明，病毒可以从宿主那里获取基因。但周四在《科学》杂志上报道的这一新发现，可能是已知首例在近期进化历史中获得了人类基因的病毒。
Previous studies have demonstrated that viruses can pick up genes from their hosts. But the new discovery, reported Thursday in the journal Science, may be the first known instance of a virus with a human gene acquired in recent evolutionary history.
“这个发现与我们息息相关，”未参与该研究的犹他大学进化生物学家内尔斯·埃尔德（Nels Elde）说。病毒的复制方式使它们特别擅长窃取DNA。
“This one hits closer to home,” said Nels Elde, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Utah who was not involved in the research. The way that viruses replicate makes them particularly good at thieving DNA.
它们感染细胞，然后通过注入自己的基因来劫持细胞的机制。受感染的细胞被迫复制病毒基因，并制造将它们包装成新病毒的蛋白质。新病毒从受感染的细胞中爆发出来，导致该细胞死亡。
They infect a cell, then co-opt its machinery by injecting their own genes. The infected cell is forced to make copies of the viral genes, along with proteins that package them into new viruses. The new viruses explode from the infected cell, which dies.
有时，这一过程会出现差错，宿主DNA的一段会被捆绑进新的病毒基因中。这种分子错误可能对人体健康构成威胁。
Sometimes this process goes awry, and a stretch of the host’s DNA gets bundled into the new viral genes. This molecular error can pose a threat to human health.
例如，感染细菌的病毒可以附着在细菌用于抵抗抗生素的基因上。这些基因对病毒本身没有直接好处，但它们可以将DNA传递给其他被感染的细菌。这是抗生素耐药性传播的方式之一。
Viruses that infect bacteria, for example, can latch onto genes that the bacteria were using to resist antibiotics. These genes don’t do the viruses any direct good, but they can pass the DNA to other bacteria they infect. That’s one way that antibiotic resistance spreads.