ISTOCK, COSMIN4000The Arc gene, which descended from an ancient group of genes that litters the eukaryotic genome, encodes a virus-like protein that transmits genetic information between neurons, according to two papers published last Thursday (January 11) in Cell.
In prior studies, researchers have found that mice engineered to lack the Arc gene lost the ability to form long-term memories. “They can’t seem to respond or adapt to changes in their environment,” Jason Shepherd, a neuroscientist at the University of Utah and one of the studies’ coauthors, tells The Atlantic. “Arc is really key to transducing the information from those experiences into changes in the brain.”
When Shepherd and his team took a closer look at Arc under a high-resolution microscope, they made a surprising discovery: the protein formed a capsid—a protective shell used by retroviruses to shuttle genetic information between cells—and carried messenger RNA (mRNA) that encoded itself. Another group, led by Vivian Budnik, a cell biologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical ...
