{"id":247080,"date":"2026-11-11T07:12:49","date_gmt":"2026-11-11T13:12:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/11\/an-ancient-virus-may-hold-the-secret-to-what-makes-the-human-brain-different"},"modified":"2026-11-11T07:12:49","modified_gmt":"2026-11-11T13:12:49","slug":"an-ancient-virus-may-hold-the-secret-to-what-makes-the-human-brain-different","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/11\/an-ancient-virus-may-hold-the-secret-to-what-makes-the-human-brain-different","title":{"rendered":"An Ancient Virus May Hold the Secret to What Makes the Human Brain Different"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Could a virus that infected chimpanzees millions of years ago help explain how the human brain became different?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Researchers at <a href=\"https:\/\/scitechdaily.com\/tag\/lund-university\/\">Lund University<\/a> have discovered that ancient viral DNA embedded in the chimpanzee genome silences a gene involved in early human brain development. Their study, published in <em><i>Science Advances<\/i><\/em>, found that the gene, LINC00662, remains active in human brain organoids, where it helps support the development of nerve cells and the connections between them.<\/p>\n<p>The finding offers a way to explore how humans and chimpanzees developed different biological traits despite sharing much of their genetic makeup. Evolution can change how existing genes are used, as well as which genes a species carries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Could a virus that infected chimpanzees millions of years ago help explain how the human brain became different? Researchers at Lund University have discovered that ancient viral DNA embedded in the chimpanzee genome silences a gene involved in early human brain development. Their study, published in Science Advances, found that the gene, LINC00662, remains active [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,385,412,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-247080","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\/247080","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=247080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247080\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}