{"id":245215,"date":"2026-10-11T01:04:34","date_gmt":"2026-10-11T06:04:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/scientists-discover-a-human-brain-gene-that-can-jump-through-dna"},"modified":"2026-10-11T01:04:34","modified_gmt":"2026-10-11T06:04:34","slug":"scientists-discover-a-human-brain-gene-that-can-jump-through-dna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/scientists-discover-a-human-brain-gene-that-can-jump-through-dna","title":{"rendered":"Scientists discover a human brain gene that can jump through DNA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-discover-a-human-brain-gene-that-can-jump-through-dna.webp\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cGenes that come from transposable elements and that are repurposed for cellular functions are typically no longer transposable,\u201d said Cedric Feschotte, a senior author of the study. \u201cBC200 was itself created from a mobile element but has retained its mobility and yet it is also clearly serving a cellular function. Somehow evolution hasn\u2019t been able to untangle these two things.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>A Rare Genetic Jump Into a Virus<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Scientists have documented a handful of cases in other species in which transposable elements moved into viruses. One early example came in the late 1980s, when researchers working with cultured moth cells observed a transposon moving from those cells into a baculovirus, a type of virus that infects insects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cGenes that come from transposable elements and that are repurposed for cellular functions are typically no longer transposable,\u201d said Cedric Feschotte, a senior author of the study. \u201cBC200 was itself created from a mobile element but has retained its mobility and yet it is also clearly serving a cellular function. Somehow evolution hasn\u2019t been able [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"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-245215","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\/245215","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\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}