Genes and rapid extinction

Anyone want to help me out here - I saw the following statement on a board I sometimes visit:

quote:

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Essentially, the human genome is filled with much more genetic material than it actually uses. However, what we've only recently discovered is that there seems to be a "failsafe" built into living organisms so that if a species overpopulates and impacts the environment to a high enough degree eventually it will encounter a viral agent that activates one of the many RET genes in the cell. Basically a virus is simply a string of genetic material, and this virus merely completes the string of the dormant extinction gene.

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This does not sound right to me? anyone who actually knows anything about genetics want to help out this poor social scientist?This message has been edited by Charles Knight, 24-Aug-2005 01:18 PM

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

Hi Charles.Sounds like gibberish to me. I just searched PubMed (PubMed) for "virus RET", and it pulls up 43 publications, none of which seem to describe the findings in your quote.Without a specific reference, it's hard to know for sure.RET tyrosine kinases are responsible for transmitting "messages" between different proteins in cells, so that cells can respond to changing conditions/stimuli. Mutations in RET tyrosine kinases are known to cause tumours, because they disrupt the normal message signalling pathways/cascades.We do have a lot of endogenous retroviruses in our genome, but mostly (in humans, at least - it's a different story in other vertebrates) they just sit around doing nothing.