Millions of years ago, retroviruses invaded the human genome. Today some of these viral remnants threaten the developing embryo, while others fight to defend it.
The new paper is the result of herculean computational analyses, involving researchers in Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom, to better understand the role ancient retroviruses play in early embryonic development—how they harm, and how they help. It sprang from work Singh had done as a PhD student at the Max Delbrück Center in Berlin, when he gathered datasets from 11 studies to painstakingly trace individual embryonic stem cells from fertilization to implantation.
But one cluster did not seem marked for any kind of future. Instead, they had the signatures of DNA damage and precursors to apoptosis, a controlled mechanism that the body uses to cull stressed or damaged cells. This damage, Singh suspected, was LINE-1’s calling card. Singh’s team dubbed these damaged cells “REjects,” a nod to their cause of death: RE for “retroelements” like LINE-1, “rejected” from the growing embryo.
The five-day-old embryo is surrounded by an outer layer of cells that will soon become the placenta. LINE-1 is active within these cells too, but unlike REjects, they don’t die. Singh suspects that because the placenta only sticks around for nine months, rather than a whole lifetime, its cells don’t last long enough for DNA damage to matter.
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