{"id":75189,"date":"2018-01-12T12:03:05","date_gmt":"2018-01-12T20:03:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/01\/brain-cells-share-information-using-a-gene-that-came-from-viruses"},"modified":"2018-01-16T17:02:08","modified_gmt":"2018-01-17T01:02:08","slug":"brain-cells-share-information-using-a-gene-that-came-from-viruses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/01\/brain-cells-share-information-using-a-gene-that-came-from-viruses","title":{"rendered":"Brain Cells Share Information Using a Gene that Came From Viruses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/brain-cells-share-information-using-a-gene-that-came-from-viruses.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Hundreds of millions of years ago, at a time when back-boned animals were just starting to crawl onto land, one such creature became infected by a virus. It was a retrovirus, capable of smuggling its genes into the DNA of its host. And as sometimes happens, those genes stayed put. They were passed on to the animal\u2019s children and grandchildren. And as these viral genes cascaded through the generations, they changed, transforming from mere stowaways into important parts of their host\u2019s biology.<\/p>\n<p>One such gene is called Arc. It\u2019s active in neurons, and plays a vital role in the brain. A mouse that\u2019s born without Arc can\u2019t learn or form new long-term memories. If it finds some cheese in a maze, it will have completely forgotten the right route the next day. \u201cThey can\u2019t seem to respond or adapt to changes in their environment,\u201d says <a href=\"http:\/\/shepherdlab.org\/about\/jason-shepherd\/\">Jason Shepherd<\/a> from the University of Utah, who has been studying Arc for years. \u201cArc is really key to transducing the information from those experiences into changes in the brain.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/science\/archive\/2018\/01\/brain-cells-can-share-information-using-a-gene-that-came-from-viruses\/550403\/?utm_source=atlfb\">https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/science\/archive\/2018\/01\/brain-ce...urce=atlfb<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hundreds of millions of years ago, at a time when back-boned animals were just starting to crawl onto land, one such creature became infected by a virus. It was a retrovirus, capable of smuggling its genes into the DNA of its host. And as sometimes happens, those genes stayed put. They were passed on to [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":359,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75189","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\/359"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75189"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75251,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75189\/revisions\/75251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}