Scientists Find Secret Code in Human Dna
27th July 2025
What the researchers from Japan, China, Canada, and the US found is that a particular family of these TEs, called MER11, can strongly influence gene expression and act like “genetic switches” — without actually changing the underlying DNA.
“Our genome was sequenced long ago, but the function of many of its parts remain unknown,” study coauthor Fumitaka Inoue from Kyoto University said in a statement about the work.
MER11 sequences are what’s known as long terminal repeat (LTR) retrotransposons. Spookily, these are believed to have originated from an endogenous retrovirus (ERV) that infected a simian ancestor tens of millions of years ago, hijacking the DNA of the cells it invaded to produce copies of its genetic makeup that have never gone away, but have largely remained inert. Per the researchers, at least eight percent of the human genome comes from these retroviruses.
That, plus all the other TEs littering our genome, makes for a lot of puzzling clutter for human scientists to sift through. The authors argue that the current methods for classifying and annotating TEs are inaccurate, leading to DNA sequences being overlooked as genetic junk. This inspired them to test their own classification system.
UPDATE: Your DNA Is Full of Ancient Viruses – And They’re Running the Show