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by coolguy132435 2389 days ago
Is what you describe the basis of Human Endogenous Retroviruses?
1 comments

I've assumed so, but I'm not a scientist by trade and never looked deeply into it. I just know that over the years I've crossed paths with several papers that showed infection of gametes (usually sperm) by common viruses and often gave them a cursory look. These papers always catch my attention because what I was taught in school never made sense to me. I mean, I know gametes are in some ways more fragile than most cells, and they are clearly isolated to an extent (for obvious reasons), but the imperviousness I was taught seemed unlikely and unsupportable. And because of that I've always been especially skeptical of arguments premised, directly or indirectly, on the extreme mutagenic fragility of gametes and germlines.