I'm having the conceptual equivalent of a TOT experience...
Coming into better focus: your conjecture reminds me of something
analogous I've read in the past year or so... Not exactly an
interaction between individual genetics and the genetics of a virus,
but organ specific effects of a systemic disease, I believe...
Possibly determined on an individual genetic basis???
Maybe by the time I get back to work (taking the day off because of
Elizabeth Warrington's talk at the Academy: cf. my post "Knowledge
Systems in the Brain) it will be well enough in focus for me to find
the reprint in my files and see if it is at all relevant to your
conjecture.
F. Frank LeFever, Ph.D.
New York Neuropsychology Group
In <01be1c07$76a18c00$84e230d1 at default> "moo" <moo at radix.com> writes:
>> Parkinson's disease and, recently, depression, especially bipolar
>depression, have been shown to have very specific sites of neuronal
>degeneration. It has also been speculated that both PD and depression
>might be due to a virual infection, probably the rabies-like Borna
virus.
>The Borna virus is apparently evolutionarily ancient due to its
conserved
>genetic sequence. Yet, it seems to be that it might cause very
specific
>yet different diseases. The etiology of PD and perhaps depression,
has
>been shown to include a genetic component of the victim. This leads
to
>the following conjecture: The victim's genetic composition affects
the
>site of the disease, but the Borna virus is the causative agent. As
a
>corollary, this suggests that one might be able to correlate the
victim's
>genetics with a neurotrophic element that determines the site of the
>disease.
>> Are there any comments or elaborations?
>