{"id":89194,"date":"2019-04-03T14:02:31","date_gmt":"2019-04-03T21:02:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/by-far-the-strangest-scientific-discovery-of-2018-your-memories-are-a-viral-infection"},"modified":"2019-04-03T14:02:31","modified_gmt":"2019-04-03T21:02:31","slug":"by-far-the-strangest-scientific-discovery-of-2018-your-memories-are-a-viral-infection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/by-far-the-strangest-scientific-discovery-of-2018-your-memories-are-a-viral-infection","title":{"rendered":"By Far the Strangest Scientific Discovery of 2018: Your Memories Are a Viral Infection"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/by-far-the-strangest-scientific-discovery-of-2018-your-memories-are-a-viral-infection.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Agree or Disagree?<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>According to two papers published in <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-018-00492-w\">Cell<\/a><\/em> on January 11, 2018, the making of memories and the processes of learning resemble, of all things, a viral infection. It works like this: The shells that transport information between neurons are assembled by a gene called Arc. Experiments conducted by two research teams revealed that the Arc protein that forms a shell, functions much like a Gag, a gene that transports a virus\u2019s genetic material between cells during an infection. For example, the retrovirus HIV uses a Gag in exactly this manner.<\/p>\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/prehistoric-viruses-and-the-function-of-the-brain\/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciam%2Fneuroscience+%28Topic%3A+Neuroscience%29&utm_content=FaceBook\">Scientific American<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thestranger.com\/slog\/2018\/12\/14\/37088299\/by-far-the-strangest-scientific-discovery-of-2018-your-memories-are-a-viral-infection\">https:\/\/www.thestranger.com\/slog\/2018\/12\/14\/37088299\/by-far-...-infection<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Agree or Disagree? According to two papers published in Cell on January 11, 2018, the making of memories and the processes of learning resemble, of all things, a viral infection. It works like this: The shells that transport information between neurons are assembled by a gene called Arc. Experiments conducted by two research teams revealed [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":502,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,412,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89194","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\/502"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89194\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}