Content: A team led by Dr. Hweijan Hsu at the Institute of Cellular and Organismic Biology, Academia Sinica discovered that aging-induced transposon reactivation in the stem cell niche causes loss of stem cells. The researchers discovered that reactivation of retrotransposons encoding endogenous virus in the aged niche cells disrupts adhesion between the niche cells and GSCs, causing the GSCs to be lost from the tissue. The findings have wide-ranging implications for aging and neurodegenerative disease. The research was published in Nature Communications.

Article Link: http://icob.sinica.edu.tw/article.php?id=687