Y chromosome evolving faster than the rest of the genetic code? What will result?

Rosborne, More important, as least to me, than projecting these findings into the future, is our increasing ability to read the DNA. What is seen here is a virus that inflected the common ancestor of all apes and us 40 million years ago.

That is some pages back in the file cabinet, but even that is only one more indicator of how right Darwin was about both origin of species and the descent of humankind.

Joe(follow the genes back far enough...see what we find.)Nation

I wonder what percentage of mutation/variation can be attributed to viral activity.

Do viruses affect the rate of variation a little, or a lot?

That would depend upon how successful the virus was, amongst other things.
With as many virus bits as they are finding, both in ourselves and other species, I'd say viruses are prime movers in evolution. What members of the species didn't get killed off got to pass on useful chunks of viral material. Not only providing better immunity against the next viral attack but, as the article I quoted shows, allows for the use of protein creations which we didn't have prior to the infection.

We only see that now as beneficial because it turned out that way. There probably have been millions of species whose results were not as good or even led to their extinction.

The 1917-18 flu virus killed off 30 million of us worldwide in about two years, striking down, in large part, young people (18-25 years old) in their prime procreating years.
In the US, 300,000 died from the flu. If you ever look at the Census Data, 1918 is the one year in the past century in which the USA lost population instead of gaining.

That's a big hit to the gene pool. How close was that to Doomsday?

Joe(Being in a little thing called WWI didn't help either but we are talking viruses here.)Nation