{"id":183732,"date":"2024-02-26T19:25:10","date_gmt":"2024-02-27T01:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/ancient-retroviruses-played-a-key-role-in-the-evolution-of-vertebrate-brains-suggest-researchers"},"modified":"2024-02-26T19:25:10","modified_gmt":"2024-02-27T01:25:10","slug":"ancient-retroviruses-played-a-key-role-in-the-evolution-of-vertebrate-brains-suggest-researchers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/ancient-retroviruses-played-a-key-role-in-the-evolution-of-vertebrate-brains-suggest-researchers","title":{"rendered":"Ancient retroviruses played a key role in the evolution of vertebrate brains, suggest researchers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/ancient-retroviruses-played-a-key-role-in-the-evolution-of-vertebrate-brains-suggest-researchers2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Researchers <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cell.com\/cell\/fulltext\/S0092-8674(24)00013-8\">report<\/a> in the journal <i>Cell<\/i> that ancient viruses may be to thank for myelin\u2014and, by extension, our large, complex brains.<\/p>\n<p>The team found that a retrovirus-derived genetic element or \u201cretrotransposon\u201d is essential for myelin production in mammals, amphibians, and fish. The <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/gene+sequence\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">gene sequence<\/a>, which they dubbed \u201cRetroMyelin,\u201d is likely a result of ancient viral infection, and comparisons of RetroMyelin in mammals, amphibians, and fish suggest that retroviral infection and genome-invasion events occurred separately in each of these groups.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRetroviruses were required for vertebrate evolution to take off,\u201d says senior author and neuroscientist Robin Franklin of Altos Labs-Cambridge Institute of Science. \u201cIf we didn\u2019t have retroviruses sticking their sequences into the vertebrate genome, then myelination wouldn\u2019t have happened, and without myelination, the whole diversity of vertebrates as we know it would never have happened.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers report in the journal Cell that ancient viruses may be to thank for myelin\u2014and, by extension, our large, complex brains. The team found that a retrovirus-derived genetic element or \u201cretrotransposon\u201d is essential for myelin production in mammals, amphibians, and fish. The gene sequence, which they dubbed \u201cRetroMyelin,\u201d is likely a result of ancient viral [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,385,412,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-evolution","category-genetics","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183732\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}