{"id":221094,"date":"2025-08-28T03:24:01","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T08:24:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/a-stunning-first-look-at-the-viruses-inside-us"},"modified":"2025-08-28T03:24:01","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T08:24:01","slug":"a-stunning-first-look-at-the-viruses-inside-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/a-stunning-first-look-at-the-viruses-inside-us","title":{"rendered":"A stunning first look at the viruses inside us"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-stunning-first-look-at-the-viruses-inside-us2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>You are mostly but not entirely human. If we crunch the numbers, 8% of your genome actually comes from viruses that got stranded there. This viral detritus is a souvenir from our evolutionary past, a reminder that viruses have been with us from the very beginning.<\/p>\n<p>Usually, this 8% of your DNA\u2014the viral bits\u2014are kept silent. Scientists call it part of the \u201cdark matter\u201d in your genome.<\/p>\n<p>Now scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) have published a first look at a key viral protein. In a study published in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/sciadv.ady8168\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Science Advances<\/i><\/a>, LJI researchers revealed the first three-dimensional structure of a protein from one of these ancient \u201chuman endogenous retroviruses (HERVs).\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You are mostly but not entirely human. If we crunch the numbers, 8% of your genome actually comes from viruses that got stranded there. This viral detritus is a souvenir from our evolutionary past, a reminder that viruses have been with us from the very beginning. Usually, this 8% of your DNA\u2014the viral bits\u2014are kept [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-221094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221094","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\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221094\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}