COULD A VIRUS CHANGE MY DNA?

It already has. Our personal genomes (the genetic information of an organism) are littered with the remnants of viruses that infected our ancestors.

- NICK CONLEY, VIA EMAIL

But fear not. These viruses aren't infectious, like the ones that cause COVID-19 or the common cold, but rather sequences that have silently become integrated into our DNA over millions of years.

Most of them come from a subset of viruses called retroviruses, which infect host cells and then trick them into making the proteins that they need to replicate.