Submitted by emelrad12 t3_zhujsn in askscience
DumbDekuKid t1_j035qme wrote
A virus is really just a piece of DNA or RNA surrounded by a carrying container. Retroviruses integrate their genomes into host genomes, other virus genomes can coincidentally be integrated at times. Look at figure 1 in article below for description of retrovirus integration mechanism.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7120651/
Our genomes are maybe 10% or more viral dna that no longer has open reading frames/is not expressed.
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