{"id":222853,"date":"2025-10-03T03:25:18","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T08:25:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/ancient-viral-dna-is-essential-for-human-embryo-development-study-shows"},"modified":"2025-10-03T03:25:18","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T08:25:18","slug":"ancient-viral-dna-is-essential-for-human-embryo-development-study-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/ancient-viral-dna-is-essential-for-human-embryo-development-study-shows","title":{"rendered":"Ancient viral DNA is essential for human embryo development, study shows"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/ancient-viral-dna-is-essential-for-human-embryo-development-study-shows2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Our ancient past isn\u2019t always buried history. When it comes to our DNA, nearly 9% of the human genome is made up of leftover genetic material from ancient viruses (called endogenous retroviruses or ERVs) that infected our ancestors millions of years ago and became permanently integrated into our genetic code. In a new study published in the journal Nature, scientists have demonstrated that one piece of this viral junk is essential for the earliest stages of human life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our ancient past isn\u2019t always buried history. When it comes to our DNA, nearly 9% of the human genome is made up of leftover genetic material from ancient viruses (called endogenous retroviruses or ERVs) that infected our ancestors millions of years ago and became permanently integrated into our genetic code. In a new study published [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,412],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-222853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222853","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=222853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222853\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}