Could we all be carrying alien DNA?

*UPDATE*

 

Having subsequently examined this story more closely, the Kazakhstani scientists would appear to be earnest in their theory concerning 'alien code' being hidden in human DNA - and when one starts to look at what they have to say in detail, it does start to make a strange kind of sense.

To see what I mean, have a look at the following video I've added in here from Paul Davies. Writing in New Scientist, Professor Paul Davies, from the Australian Centre for Astrobiology at Macquarie University in Sydney, also suggests - amongst other theories - that a cosmic greeting card could have been left in the so-called ‘junk DNA’ contained in every human cell.

If you can't view the video on your mobile device try clicking here.

According to an article in the Australian Courier (which in turn links to a six month old Discovery article) scientists in Kazakhstan - of all places - supposedly believe that humanity has alien code written into its DNA and that we might have been created by something 'non-terrestrial', much in the way 'the engineers' created humanity in the recent Ridley Scott movie Prometheus.  

Conspiracy theorists shouldn't start punching the air just yet however.

Still of an 'Engineer' from the Ridley Scott movie Prometheus

No hard evidence in support of this appears to have been submitted yet nor does there appear to have been any scrutiny by the rest of the world's scientific community thus far.

Could it be that someone in Kazakhstan is trying to raise the country's profile on the world map for being associated with something other than Borat?

Or could it just be an old April fool's joke - just look at the date of the original Discovery article...