Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Back in 2008, neurovirologist Renée Douville observed something weird in the brains of people who’d died of the movement disorder ...

Long interspersed nuclear element-1 (LINE-1 or L1) is the only active, self-copying genetic element in the human genome—comprising about 17% of the genome. It is commonly called a "jumping gene" or ...

The only remaining autonomous 'jumping gene' can only attach to, and stitch a copy of itself into, DNA when it builds up into large clusters and only as cells divide. Viruses are known to use the ...