NEW YORK – Researchers have used a new approach to uncover additional endogenous viruses hidden within the human genome.
Endogenous viruses are thought to be the remnants of ancient viruses that caused infections and hitched a ride within host genomes. Teasing out these genetic leftovers has typically relied on identifying sequences within a host genome that resemble known viruses, but researchers from Kyoto University and their colleagues developed a machine learning approach to detect other ancient viruses left behind in the human genome.