An international collaboration between geneticists, evolutionary biologists, bioinformaticians and clinicians has identified how some of these ancient viral DNA fragments are influencing new life today—specifically, helping regulate genes that control normal placenta development and operation. One particular gene, EPS8L1, when overexpressed, induces key features of pre-eclampsia, a potentially life-threatening disorder during pregnancy. The research was reported this week in Genome Biology.

“These findings connect a deep evolutionary process to a very modern clinical problem and point to a potential biomarker to detect pre-eclampsia risk before symptoms develop,” says Professor Zsuzsanna Izsvák, Group Leader of the Mobile DNA Lab at the Max Delbrück Center in Berlin and co-corresponding author.