Placenta in females, muscle mass in males: The dual heritage of a virus

It is known that genes inherited from ancient retroviruses are essential to the placenta in mammals, a finding to which scientists in the Laboratoire Physiologie et Pathologie Moleacuteculaires des Retrovirus Endogenes et Infectieux (CNRS/Universite Paris-Sud) contributed. Today, the same scientists reveal a new chapter in this story: these genes of viral origin may also be responsible for the more developed muscle mass seen in males. Their findings are published on 2 September 2016 in PLOS Genetics.

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